etcd vs Valkey
etcd
etcd.io
Valkey
valkey.ioSide by side
| Figure | etcd | Valkey |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Key-Value Databases | 8.0 (#7) | 7.4 (#21) |
| Installation | The project provides pre-built binaries, source builds, and container images; its install guide warns that OS package manager installations may be outdated and are not officially supported. | The installation guide describes installation from source, Docker containers, Homebrew and MacPorts on macOS, and package managers for Linux and BSD distributions. |
| Integrations | The integrations listing includes Kubernetes, CoreDNS, and client libraries for multiple languages; it cautions that third-party tools and libraries listed there are not tested or maintained by the etcd team. | The Valkey site lists managed or compatible offerings from Amazon ElastiCache, Google Cloud Memorystore, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Cache, UpCloud, DigitalOcean, and others. |
| Security | etcd supports TLS and client-certificate authentication for client-to-server and peer communication, but these security features are not enabled by default. | Valkey recommends restricting network access to trusted clients and provides ACL-based authentication and optional TLS for client connections, replication links, and the cluster bus. |
Plans
In their own words
etcd
etcd is an open-source, strongly consistent distributed key-value store for data used by distributed systems and clusters of machines. It arranges values in hierarchical directories and lets clients watch keys or directories for changes. Clients can read and write values with standard HTTP tools such as curl, and keys may have optional time-to-live expiration. The project uses the Raft protocol and handles leader elections during network partitions, including when a leader machine fails. etcd is a core Kubernetes component and its primary datastore. The project provides pre-built binaries, source builds, and container images. Linux on AMD64 and ARM64 is tier 1; Darwin and Windows on either architecture are tier 3, and other platforms are unsupported. TLS and client-certificate authentication are supported for client and peer connections, but neither is enabled by default. The software is self-hosted and licensed under Apache 2.0, with a listed price of free. The integrations listing includes Kubernetes, CoreDNS, and language client libraries, while warning that third-party tools and libraries there are not tested or maintained by the etcd team.
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.