What is Dragonfly used for?

Dragonfly is an in-memory data store written in C++ that speaks the Redis and Memcached protocols, using a multi-threaded design to use modern hardware more efficiently. It is a good fit for replacing Redis to cut infrastructure cost, high-throughput caching layers, and session and leaderboard storage.

Is Dragonfly open source?

Yes. Dragonfly is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at dragonflydb/dragonfly and is written mainly in C++.

Yes. Dragonfly is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Dragonfly?

Yes. Dragonfly can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Dragonfly an alternative to?

Dragonfly is an open-source alternative to Upstash, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon MemoryDB and Google Memorystore. Other open-source alternatives to Upstash include Valkey, Redis and DiceDB.

Is Dragonfly actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Dragonfly was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.0.0, published on 16 September 2026. The project has 32k stars on GitHub.

Dragonfly: open-source alternative to Upstash

About Dragonfly

Dragonfly is an in-memory data store designed for modern application workloads and positioned as a replacement for Redis and Memcached. It implements the Redis and Memcached APIs, so existing applications and client libraries can point at it without code changes.

Unlike the single-threaded design of classic Redis, Dragonfly is multi-threaded and built around fibers, which lets one instance use many CPU cores. The project reports much higher throughput, better cache hit rates with lower tail latency and up to 80 percent fewer resources for a workload of the same size, with benchmarks against Redis on cloud instances in its documentation. Topics also link it to caching, key-value storage, message brokering and the Valkey and KeyDB ecosystems. Documentation covers a quick start, configuration, design decisions and building from source.

Dragonfly's license is listed as 'Other' on GitHub, so check the terms before using it in a commercial product. You can run it on your own servers or through Dragonfly Cloud, the company's hosted service, and a guide for AI agents is provided for tooling integration.

Key features

Compatible with Redis and Memcached APIs
Multi-threaded, fiber-based architecture
Drop-in adoption without code changes
Caching, key-value and message broker uses
Published benchmarks against Redis
Managed Dragonfly Cloud option

Good fit for

→Replacing Redis to cut infrastructure cost
→High-throughput caching layers
→Session and leaderboard storage

Built with: C++; Redis
Tags: in-memory; redis-alternative; memcached; cache; key-value; database; cpp; multi-threaded; nosql

Dragonfly: questions and answers

What is Dragonfly used for?: Dragonfly is an in-memory data store written in C++ that speaks the Redis and Memcached protocols, using a multi-threaded design to use modern hardware more efficiently. It is a good fit for replacing Redis to cut infrastructure cost, high-throughput caching layers, and session and leaderboard storage.
Is Dragonfly open source?: Yes. Dragonfly is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at dragonflydb/dragonfly and is written mainly in C++.
Is Dragonfly free?: Yes. Dragonfly is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Dragonfly?: Yes. Dragonfly can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Dragonfly an alternative to?: Dragonfly is an open-source alternative to Upstash, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon MemoryDB and Google Memorystore. Other open-source alternatives to Upstash include Valkey, Redis and DiceDB.
Is Dragonfly actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Dragonfly was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.0.0, published on 16 September 2026. The project has 32k stars on GitHub.