Same commands, same protocol, significantly more throughput.

KeyDB is fully free and open source under BSD-3. It's a fork of Redis maintained by Snap (yes, the Snapchat company). The headline feature is multi-threading: Redis uses one CPU core no matter how beefy your server is. KeyDB uses all of them. For write-heavy workloads, the difference is measurable. It also supports active-active replication (called Active Replica), which Redis only offers in their paid Enterprise tier.

Drop-in compatible means your existing Redis clients, commands, and configurations work without changes. Swap the binary and you're running KeyDB. Solo devs: if Redis works fine for you, don't switch. Small teams hitting Redis bottlenecks: KeyDB is a free upgrade. Growing teams needing active replication: this saves you from paying for Redis Enterprise.

The catch: community momentum has slowed since Snap's acquisition. Redis itself has been improving (Redis 7+ added multi-threading for I/O), narrowing the gap. And if you need the managed cloud experience, KeyDB doesn't have one; you're self-hosting.

### Fully Free

KeyDB is 100% free and open source under BSD-3-Clause. No paid tier, no hosted cloud version from the maintainers.

### Self-Hosted Setup

Same as Redis: compile from source or use Docker. Configuration is Redis-compatible with additional KeyDB-specific options (thread count, active replica config). If you already run Redis, the migration is swapping the binary and adding `server-threads` to your config.

### What You Get for $0

- Multi-threaded architecture (use all your CPU cores) - Active-active replication (Active Replica) - Redis protocol compatible, all clients work - FLASH support (extend memory to SSD) - Subkey expires - All Redis data structures and commands

### The Math

Redis Enterprise for active-active replication: starts at $500+/mo. KeyDB gives you active replication for free. Even if you just want better throughput on existing hardware, KeyDB squeezes more performance from the same server, that's real cost savings.

### Verdict

If you need more throughput than single-threaded Redis provides or want active replication without paying for Redis Enterprise, KeyDB is free money on the table.

KeyDB

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Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

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