Redis vs Dragonfly
Dragonfly is the one alternative here that was written from scratch rather than forked, and its pitch is throughput on a single large machine. This page does not publish benchmark numbers, because we did not measure them. What we can check is the licence, and on this pairing the licence is what actually decides it: Redis 8 can be used under AGPLv3, an OSI-approved licence, while Dragonfly is BSL 1.1, which is source-available and not open source.
Pick Dragonfly if throughput on one big box is your binding constraint, you run it for your own application, and a source-available licence with a change date of 1 November 2030 is acceptable to your legal team. Stay on Redis if you need an OSI-approved licence today, if you sell anything that could be read as an in-memory data store or a managed service, or if you depend on the modules that ship as part of Redis 8.
Side by side
Redis vs Dragonfly at a glance
| Redis | Dragonfly | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Tri-licence: choose RSALv2, SSPLv1 or AGPLv3 | Business Source License 1.1 |
| OSI-approved? | ✓ yes, via the AGPLv3 option | ✗ source-available, not open source |
| Becomes permissive when? | Not applicable; AGPLv3 applies now | Apache 2.0 on 1 Nov 2030, or a release's fourth anniversary, whichever is first |
| May you embed it in an in-memory data store product? | ✓ subject to your chosen licence | ✗ forbidden by the Additional Use Grant |
| May you offer it as a managed service? | Governed by the licence you selected | ✗ forbidden by the Additional Use Grant |
| Origin | The original in-memory data store | Written from scratch, not a fork |
| Held by | Redis Ltd. | DragonflyDB |
| Performance | The baseline everyone benchmarks against | Built for throughput on one large machine; figures here would be vendor claims, so we publish none |
| Modules | ✓ RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisTimeSeries, RedisBloom, integral since Redis 8 | Not verified for this page |
| Vendor cloud pricing | Redis Cloud: free to 30 MB, $5/month Essentials, $200/month Pro minimum | Not verified for this page |
| Best for | Teams that need an OSI-approved licence or the module set | Internal workloads where throughput beats licence purity |
Sources: Redis licences · Redis pricing · Dragonfly repository and LICENSE.md. Compiled August 2026.
Where Dragonfly wins
It was designed for one large machine, not for a fork's constraints
Every other option on this site is either the Redis codebase or a deliberate simplification of it. Dragonfly is a clean-room engine whose reason to exist is getting more out of a single big server, which is exactly the shape of problem you have when a Redis instance is pinned to one core and the next step is sharding. Take the throughput claims from the vendor as vendor claims and run the comparison on your own traffic; that is the only benchmark that decides anything.
A licence with an expiry date beats a licence without one
BSL 1.1 is not open source, but it is not permanent either. Dragonfly's LICENSE.md fixes the conversion to Apache 2.0 at 1 November 2030, or the fourth anniversary of a given release if that comes first. That is a far more predictable position than a licence that can be changed again at a vendor's discretion, which is precisely the thing that happened to Redis in March 2024 and again in May 2025.
For internal use, the restrictions are narrow
The Additional Use Grant blocks two specific things: building Dragonfly into a product that is itself an in-memory data store, and offering it as a managed service. If Dragonfly simply sits behind your own application, neither clause bites. Most teams reading this page are in that position, and they should evaluate the engine on its merits rather than on the word "BSL".
Where Redis still wins
It is open source today, and that sentence needs saying plainly because the internet has spent two years saying otherwise. Redis Open Source 8.0.0 and later ships under a tri-licence, and one of the three options is GNU AGPLv3, which is OSI-approved. If your procurement process has a hard requirement for an OSI-approved licence, Redis clears it now and Dragonfly does not clear it until 2030.
Redis also still owns the ecosystem question. RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisTimeSeries and RedisBloom are an integral part of Redis 8 under the same tri-licence, and if any of them is in your architecture, the comparison is not close: you are not choosing between two caches, you are choosing between a stack and an engine. Add the managed availability of Redis from its own cloud, priced free to 30 MB and $5 per month on Essentials, and small deployments have very little to gain from the move.
Migrating Redis to Dragonfly
The path most teams take:
1. Do the licence review first. Answer one question before touching infrastructure: does your company sell anything that could be described as an in-memory data store or a managed service? If yes, stop here; nothing else about the engine matters.
2. Prove the throughput on your own workload. Replay real traffic rather than trusting a published benchmark, and measure the metric that hurts you today, whether that is tail latency, connection count or memory per key.
3. Run both for one cycle. Keep Redis serving behind a flag while Dragonfly takes a slice of traffic; the double spend for a week is the cheapest insurance available.
4. What does not move. Anything built on the Redis 8 modules, and any assumption that a future cloud provider will offer you a managed Dragonfly, since the Additional Use Grant forbids exactly that.
Common questions
FAQ: Redis vs Dragonfly
When does Dragonfly become Apache 2.0?
Dragonfly's LICENSE.md sets the change date at 1 November 2030, or the fourth anniversary of a given release, whichever comes first. Until that date the code is Business Source License 1.1, which is source-available and not open source. Note what the per-release clause means in practice: an old release you are still running converts on its own fourth anniversary, so the licence covering your deployment depends on which version you are on, not only on the calendar year.
Can I offer Dragonfly as a managed service?
No. Dragonfly's Additional Use Grant forbids two things outright: embedding it in a product that is itself an in-memory data store, and offering it as a managed service. Ordinary internal use, where Dragonfly backs your own application, is not what those clauses target. But if your company sells hosting, a database platform, or anything a customer would describe as a managed cache, read the grant with your legal team before you build on it.
Is Dragonfly faster than Redis?
Dragonfly is designed for higher throughput on a single large machine, and that is the whole reason the project exists. We have not benchmarked it, so this page publishes no numbers: every performance figure you will find comes from a vendor or from a test harness that may not resemble your workload. Treat those percentages as vendor claims, run the comparison on your own traffic, and decide the licence question first, because a licence you cannot accept makes the benchmark irrelevant.