Tools/dragonflydb/dragonfly

Dragonfly

Modern Redis/Memcached replacement

31.6k ★+113/wkgrowthC++BSL 1.1trending

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Replaces:Redis Cloud

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The Lens

By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.

Updated Sep 2026

Dragonfly is a Redis compatible in-memory data store rewritten in C++ with a multi threaded architecture. Redis runs on a single core, which is its fundamental bottleneck. Dragonfly uses every core on the box. Self-hosting is free under BSL 1.1 for internal use.

The headline is throughput. Dragonfly claims up to 25x on multi core machines, and even conservative real world tests show several times the performance of Redis on the same hardware. It also holds the same data in less memory. Migration is close to drop in: point your app at Dragonfly on the same port with the same commands, and most applications work without code changes.

Teams running Redis without performance pain have no reason to switch. Teams hitting the single core ceiling get a large upgrade by swapping a binary. Dragonfly Cloud is the managed path, starting at $36 a month on the Flex tier, with the published calculator putting a 12GB instance near $96 a month, or $77 with compression enabled. Business starts at $2,000 a month.

The catch is the license. BSL 1.1 converts to Apache 2.0 on November 1, 2030, and that date moves forward with new releases. Until then the use grant bars you from building an in-memory data store product on it or offering it as a service to third parties. Internal use is unaffected. The other gotcha sits at the compatibility edges, where some Lua scripting and module behavior differs from Redis, so test your real workload before production moves onto it.

Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

free self hosted paid cloud

What's Free

Self-hosted Dragonfly: full Redis and Memcached compatibility, multi-threaded engine, snapshots, replication. Licensed under BSL 1.1 with a change date of November 1, 2030, after which it becomes Apache 2.0. Free to use inside your own product or service, provided that product is not itself an in-memory data store and you are not making Dragonfly available to third parties as a service.

What's Behind the Paywall

Dragonfly Cloud:

Flex: starting at $36/month. One click provisioning, horizontal and vertical scaling.
Business: starting at $2,000/month. Bring your own cloud, dedicated support.
Enterprise: contact for pricing. Run anywhere, white glove migrations.

The published pricing calculator puts a 12GB instance around $96/month, or $77/month with compression enabled.

The License Question

BSL 1.1 blocks two things: shipping Dragonfly as part of your own in-memory data store product, and offering it to third parties as a hosted or managed service that competes with DragonflyDB. Using it inside your own application is fine. Running it on your own infrastructure is fine. The restriction lifts on November 1, 2030, though new releases carry forward change dates of their own.

The Math

Self-hosting on a VPS you already pay for still beats every managed option on raw cost. Flex at $36/month is the floor for managed Dragonfly, so the real question is whether backups, monitoring, and one click scaling are worth $36 a month against the hours you would otherwise spend running it.

Verdict

Self-host if you have the ops capacity. The performance gain over Redis is real and the license does not touch internal use. Pay for Flex only when you want somebody else holding the pager.

Free to self-host under BSL 1.1 with real performance gains over Redis. Managed Dragonfly Cloud now starts at $36 a month on the Flex tier.

What to do by team size

Solo: free self-hosted; if Redis is your bottleneck, swap the binary and keep the commands
Small team: free self-hosted, which still undercuts both Dragonfly Cloud and Redis Cloud
Medium team: free self-hosted, or Flex from $36 a month; test Redis compatibility against your workload first
Large team: Business from $2,000 a month, or self-host with dedicated ops. BSL is fine for internal use

Self-hosting ops:moderate

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