FoundationDB vs Valkey
FoundationDB
foundationdb.org
Valkey
valkey.ioSide by side
| Figure | FoundationDB | Valkey |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Key-Value Databases | 7.8 (#10) | 7.4 (#21) |
| Spec score · Database Software | 7.7 (#57) | 7.7 (#58) |
| Security | FoundationDB supports TLS for communication security and authentication, but cluster connections are unencrypted 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. |
| Support | The project provides community forums for technical and user discussions. | The Valkey site lists Percona as offering operational support and project-based consulting for Valkey databases. |
| What it does | FoundationDB is a distributed database that organizes structured data as an ordered key-value store. | 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
FoundationDB
FoundationDB has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.