Valkey vs Redis: API Protocol, Data Format & Compatibility — The Technical Deep-Dive (opens in new tab)

When Redis changed its license on March 20, 2024, it triggered one of the fastest open-source forks in recent memory. Eight days later, on March 28, 2024, the Linux Foundation announced Valkey — a community fork built from the last BSD-licensed Redis release, version 7.2.4 (Valkey migration docs). Two years on, the practical question for engineers isn't political. It's technical: how compatible are these two systems really, at the wire, at the disk, and at the command level? This deep-dive an...