Redis is more powerful, Memcached is a simpler pure cache.
Redis¶
- Data structures (strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, hashes)
- Persistence (RDB, AOF)
- Pub/Sub, Streams
- Lua scripting
- Cluster and Sentinel
- Single-threaded (per command atomic)
Memcached¶
- Key-value only (strings)
- No persistence
- Multi-threaded
- Simpler, less memory per key
- No advanced features
When to Use Which¶
- Redis — sessions, leaderboards, queues, rate limiting, pub/sub + cache
- Memcached — pure caching, simple key-value, multi-threaded advantage
Redis for 95% of Use Cases¶
Redis is more versatile. Memcached only for pure caching of large volumes.
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