Valkey vs. Redis for Laravel Caching and Queues: What You Need to Know

In March 2024, the Redis project changed its license from the permissive BSD 3-Clause to a dual license combining the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and the Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). This licensing change meant that cloud providers and hosting platforms could no longer freely offer Redis as a managed service without a commercial agreement with Redis Ltd. The response was immediate. The Linux Foundation forked Redis 7.2.4 under the BSD 3-Clause license and named the fork Valkey. Within months, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and dozens of other organizations joined as contributors. By mid-2025, Valkey had established itself as the primary open-source continuation of the Redis codebase, with active development and a growing feature set. For Laravel developers, this raises practical questions. Is Valkey compatible with existing Redis drivers? Do you need to change your application code? What about performance? This guide answers all of these questions and explains