Is Valkey Free for Commercial Use? The Valkey License Explained

The COPYING file of the valkey-io/valkey repository on GitHub, where GitHub shows that the project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause New or Revised License, with commercial use, modification, distribution and private use permitted.

Valkey is free for commercial use under the BSD 3-Clause license. Here’s what the license allows, the three conditions it sets and how Redis licenses differ.

November 13, 2026 1

Valkey vs Redis: What’s the Difference?

The Migration from Redis to Valkey page on valkey.io, saying that Valkey is compatible with Redis OSS 7.2 and all earlier open source Redis versions, and that data files from Redis Community Edition 7.4 and later are not compatible with Valkey.

Valkey began as a fork of Redis OSS 7.2.4. Here’s how the two now differ in license, governance, compatibility and data files, and which one to choose.