Redis started as an open-source project created by Salvatore Sanfilippo (known online as antirez) in 2009. The company behind it, originally called Redis Labs, rebranded to simply Redis in 2021. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, it raised over $350 million in funding before going public through a merger in 2024.
The Redis data store is incredibly fast — it operates primarily in memory, which makes it the go-to choice for caching, session storage, real-time analytics, message queues, and leaderboards. It supports multiple data structures including strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, and streams, making it far more versatile than a simple key-value cache.
Redis is used by millions of developers worldwide. Major companies like Twitter, GitHub, Snapchat, and Stack Overflow rely on it for performance-critical operations. The project has consistently ranked among the most loved databases in Stack Overflow developer surveys.
In 2024, Redis made a controversial licensing change, moving from the BSD license to a dual RSALv2/SSPL model. This prompted the community to create the Valkey fork under the Linux Foundation. Despite the licensing debate, Redis remains deeply embedded in application stacks everywhere. Redis Cloud, the company’s managed service, runs across major cloud providers and offers features like active-active geo-distribution that are hard to set up on your own.
