Apache Ignite vs Valkey
Apache Ignite
ignite.apache.org
Valkey
valkey.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache Ignite | Valkey |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Key-Value Databases | 8.9 (#3) | 7.4 (#21) |
| Spec score · In-Memory Databases | 8.9 (#4) | 7.4 (#20) |
| Deployment | Ignite can run on bare metal, virtual machines, Docker, Kubernetes and cloud environments, with thick and thin clients plus JDBC, ODBC and REST access. | Valkey can run as a standalone daemon or in a cluster, with replication and high availability options. |
| Integrations | The download page lists AWS, Azure, GCE, and Spring extensions, including Spring Cache and Spring Data extensions. | The Valkey site lists managed or compatible offerings from Amazon ElastiCache, Google Cloud Memorystore, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Cache, UpCloud, DigitalOcean, and others. |
| Support | The project directs usage questions to its user mailing list and technical Q&A to Stack Overflow. | The Valkey site lists Percona as offering operational support and project-based consulting for Valkey databases. |
| Use cases | Listed use cases include event stream processing, microservices state management, session management, and AI/ML feature stores. | The quick start guide describes caching database or API results, session tokens, rendered HTML, reports, leaderboards, matchmaking, and AI or ML inference outputs. |
| What it does | Apache Ignite is a distributed database designed for high-performance computing with in-memory speed. | Valkey is an open source, high-performance key/value datastore for caching, message queues, and use as a primary database. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache Ignite
Apache Ignite is a free, open-source, memory-first distributed SQL database for high-velocity workloads. It keeps data primarily in memory, with persistence available through AIPERSIST, and supports ACID transactions across partitions using Raft consensus. MVCC snapshot isolation enables non-blocking reads. SQL access includes JDBC drivers, a Table API and native APIs, while catalog-driven schema management allows column and index changes without stopping the cluster. DataStreamer handles high-throughput writes with backpressure control. Native clients are listed for Java, .NET, C++ and Python, alongside AWS, Azure, GCE and Spring extensions. Built-in operational capabilities include authentication, SSL/TLS security, OpenTelemetry metrics, recovery snapshots and backups. Listed uses include event stream processing, microservices state management, session management and AI/ML feature stores. Ignite is self-hosted and available through binary, source, Docker and Maven/Gradle options. The project identifies Ignite 2 as a long-term-support release recommended for existing deployments.
Valkey
Valkey is a free, open-source key/value datastore for caching, message queues and primary database workloads. It handles strings, numbers, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs and other data types. Deployments can run as a standalone daemon or as a cluster, with replication and high-availability options. Lua scripting and module plugins can add commands and data types. Documented uses include caching database or API results, session tokens, rendered HTML, reports, leaderboards, matchmaking and AI or ML inference outputs. Installation is available from source, Docker, Homebrew or MacPorts on macOS, and package managers for Linux and BSD. Valkey runs on Linux and macOS and can be self-hosted or accessed through an API; Windows is not officially supported, though WSL installation is described for development. The Linux Foundation backs the project, which says it will remain open source. Security guidance covers ACL authentication, optional TLS and network restrictions. Protocols include RESP, TCP and Unix sockets.