What is Tarantool used for?

Tarantool is an in-memory database management system designed for high-load services, supporting transactions and real-time analytics. It is a good fit for high-load services, event stream processing and customer profile storage.

Is Tarantool open source?

Yes. Tarantool is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at tarantool/tarantool and is written mainly in Lua.

Yes. Tarantool is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

Can I self-host Tarantool?

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

What is Tarantool an alternative to?

Tarantool is an open-source alternative to Amazon ElastiCache, Momento and Aerospike. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon ElastiCache include Redis, Dragonfly and Valkey.

Is Tarantool actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Tarantool was on 14 October 2026, and the latest release is 3.8.1, published on 4 September 2026. The project has 3.7k stars on GitHub.

Tarantool: open-source alternative to Amazon ElastiCache

About Tarantool

Tarantool is a database management system that stores data in RAM to provide fast processing and stable operation for critical systems. It supports ACID transactions and data encryption, and is designed for high write loads.

The product is suited for high-load solutions such as event stream processing, customer profile storage, and fast queue brokers. It can be used in OLTP scenarios as a faster alternative to relational databases, and allows placing applications close to data to reduce network overhead.

Key features

In-memory data storage for fast processing
Support for ACID transactions
Data encryption
Horizontal scaling with load distribution without downtime
Fault tolerance with redundancy and automatic recovery
Can be used in OLTP scenarios instead of relational databases

Good fit for

High-load services
Event stream processing
Customer profile storage

Built with: Lua tools
Tags: in-memory; database; oltp; transactions; analytics; high-load

Tarantool: questions and answers

What is Tarantool used for?: Tarantool is an in-memory database management system designed for high-load services, supporting transactions and real-time analytics. It is a good fit for high-load services, event stream processing and customer profile storage.
Is Tarantool open source?: Yes. Tarantool is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at tarantool/tarantool and is written mainly in Lua.
Is Tarantool free?: Yes. Tarantool is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
Can I self-host Tarantool?: Yes. Tarantool can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Tarantool an alternative to?: Tarantool is an open-source alternative to Amazon ElastiCache, Momento and Aerospike. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon ElastiCache include Redis, Dragonfly and Valkey.
Is Tarantool actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Tarantool was on 14 October 2026, and the latest release is 3.8.1, published on 4 September 2026. The project has 3.7k stars on GitHub.