Caching and messaging
Redis has 9 supported release lines and Memcached has 1. Redis 8.0 reaches end of life on Dec 1, 2026. Redis offers RSALv2, SSPL-1.0 or AGPL-3.0; Memcached is open source (BSD-3-Clause).
Last checked against endoflife.date and deps.dev.
Every value links to its source. Where a row doesn’t apply to one of them, the cell says why.
| Compared on |  Redis |  Memcached |
|---|---|---|
| Support and releases | ||
| Supported release lines | ||
| Latest release | ||
| Releases in the last 12 months | ||
| Security | ||
| Advisories published in the last 12 months | Not tracked as a package on OSV.dev | Not tracked as a package on OSV.dev |
| OpenSSF Scorecard | ||
| Licence and hosting | ||
| Licence | RSALv2, SSPL-1.0 or AGPL-3.0 Open source under the AGPL-3.0 option AGPLv3 is OSI-approved, but you must publish your changes if you serve a modified Redis over a network. Versions 7.4–7.x are RSALv2 / SSPLv1 only. | |
| How you run it | Self-hosted, or Redis Cloud, the vendor’s managed service | Self-hosted, or managed by Amazon ElastiCache and Google Cloud Memorystore |
| Adoption | ||
| GitHub stars | ||
| Redis | Memcached |
|---|---|
| Supported release lines | |
| Latest release | |
| Releases in the last 12 months | |
| Redis | Memcached |
|---|---|
| Advisories published in the last 12 months | |
Not tracked as a package on OSV.dev | Not tracked as a package on OSV.dev |
| OpenSSF Scorecard | |
| Redis | Memcached |
|---|---|
| Licence | |
RSALv2, SSPL-1.0 or AGPL-3.0 Open source under the AGPL-3.0 option AGPLv3 is OSI-approved, but you must publish your changes if you serve a modified Redis over a network. Versions 7.4–7.x are RSALv2 / SSPLv1 only. | |
| How you run it | |
Self-hosted, or Redis Cloud, the vendor’s managed service | Self-hosted, or managed by Amazon ElastiCache and Google Cloud Memorystore |
| Redis | Memcached |
|---|---|
| GitHub stars | |
Read across for what matters to you. Each answer comes from the data above or the project’s licence and hosting options.
| If you need | Redis | Memcached |
|---|---|---|
| An open-source licence | Yes: Under the AGPL-3.0 option | Yes: BSD-3-Clause |
| Someone else runs it for you | Yes: From Redis Cloud | Yes: From Amazon ElastiCache and Google Cloud Memorystore |
| You can run it on your own servers | Yes: Yes, it’s software you install | Yes: Yes, it’s software you install |
| A long support window | 8.2 is supported until Sep 1, 2030 | Only the newest line (1.6); no end dates published |
| Redis | Memcached |
|---|---|
| An open-source licence | |
Yes: Under the AGPL-3.0 option | Yes: BSD-3-Clause |
| Someone else runs it for you | |
Yes: From Redis Cloud | Yes: From Amazon ElastiCache and Google Cloud Memorystore |
| You can run it on your own servers | |
Yes: Yes, it’s software you install | Yes: Yes, it’s software you install |
| A long support window | |
8.2 is supported until Sep 1, 2030 | Only the newest line (1.6); no end dates published |
In-memory data store with pub/sub, persistence, and Lua scripting
Simple, high-performance distributed memory caching system
From StackPrism’s curated notes. Pricing isn’t covered here: it changes often, so check each vendor’s pricing page.
Both are in-memory caches you put in front of a database. Memcached is a deliberately simple key-value cache; Redis adds data structures (lists, sets, sorted sets, streams), optional persistence and pub/sub, so it often doubles as a queue or session store.
Release lines and end-of-life dates come from endoflife.date, release counts from deps.dev’s publish dates, and advisories from OSV.dev, counted once per flaw even when it’s listed under several ids, and checked against CISA’s list of vulnerabilities known to be exploited. Status and incident history come from each vendor’s public status feed; licences from each project’s licence file or the vendor’s licensing page, linked in the table.
The data refreshes every few hours and the time it was checked is shown above. There’s no pricing and no overall winner: which one fits depends on your constraints. To see how the versions you actually run hold up, check your repo.
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