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Redis vs Memcached

Full-featured vs minimal in-memory cache.

Redis is a data structure server (strings, lists, sets, pub/sub). Memcached is a minimal key-value cache.

At a glance

RedisMemcached
Data typesManyKey-value only
PersistenceOptionalNone
Pub/subYesNo
Use caseCache + morePure cache

When to pick Redis

More than just cache: pub/sub, queues, data structures.

When to pick Memcached

Pure caching, max simplicity.

My verdict

Redis for almost all new use cases. Memcached is legacy.

Further reading