Difficulty: Easy
Description
Valkey is an open-source fork of Redis (compatible with Redis ≤ 7.2 commands), launched following the Redis 7.4 license change. AWS ElastiCache for Valkey offers the same performance and API compatibility as Redis at a lower price — no application code changes required for clusters running Redis 7.2 or earlier.
Selection Criteria
The ElastiCache cluster uses the
redisengine (not alreadyvalkey).The Redis version is ≤ 7.2 (fully compatible with Valkey API).
⚠️ Redis 7.4+ : uses a proprietary license — migration to Valkey is technically possible but Redis-specific modules (RedisSearch, RedisJSON, RedisBloom) are not available on Valkey.
Expected Saving
Cluster Mode | Estimated Savings vs Redis |
Provisioned instances | ~20% |
Serverless | ~32% |
⚠️ Savings calculations are currently based on estimated percentages. Real pricing from the AWS Pricing API will be used in a future update.
Operational Impact
In-place upgrade : for compatible Redis versions, migration can be done with minimal downtime via the AWS Console or CLI.
✅ API-compatible : all Redis commands up to version 7.2 work identically on Valkey — no application code changes required.
⚠️ Redis modules (RedisSearch, RedisJSON, RedisBloom, etc.) are not available on Valkey — verify that none are in use before migrating.
⚠️ Reserved Instances : verify that an existing Redis RI applies to Valkey before proceeding.