Google Cloud Memorystore vs Varnish Cache
Google Cloud Memorystore
cloud.google.com
Varnish Cache
varnish.orgSide by side
| Figure | Google Cloud Memorystore | Varnish Cache |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.05/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Caching Software | 8.0 (#8) | 7.3 (#16) |
| Security | The service lists VPC and private IP network isolation, IAM integration, encryption in transit, and Redis or Valkey AUTH; Valkey and Redis Cluster also list IAM authentication, ACLs, and customer-managed SSL certificates. | The security guide describes four control levels: command-line arguments, the CLI interface, VCL programs, and HTTP requests. |
| Support | Every Google Cloud customer, including free-trial customers, gets Basic Support with documentation, community forums, billing assistance, and Active Assist. | The project points users to Discord, Stack Overflow, and LinkedIn, and says commercial support is available through Varnish Software. |
Plans
Google Cloud Memorystore
- Memorystore for Redis$0.05 a month
- Memorystore for Redis Cluster$0.19 a month
- Memorystore for Valkey$0.19 a month
- Memorystore for MemcachedPrice not published
In their own words
Google Cloud Memorystore
Google Cloud Memorystore has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Varnish Cache
Varnish Cache is a reverse caching proxy for Linux and self-hosted deployments. It serves cached responses from memory and sends other requests to origin servers. Its caching policy is defined in Varnish Configuration Language (VCL), which compiles to native code. Cached objects follow standard HTTP cache headers and leave the cache when they expire. Varnish supports TLS termination within the process and TLS connections to dynamic origin backends. It includes varnishlog for structured logging and varnishstat for metrics, and offers official container images and a Kubernetes Helm chart. Installation guidance covers Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and compatible distributions. Varnish modules add functions callable from VCL. Its security guide describes controls at the command-line, CLI, VCL, and HTTP request levels. The free plan costs nothing. One limit to account for: Varnish avoids caching data when it cannot determine that doing so is safe, and applications may need configuration changes to reach a high cache hit rate.