Dragonfly vs Memcached
Dragonfly: A multi-threaded, shared-nothing in-memory store that speaks Redis and Memcached on one big box. Memcached: The original multi-threaded, dead-simple distributed memory cache for key-value blobs.
key differences
- Licensing: Dragonfly is source-available (Business Source License 1.1); Memcached is open source (permissive) (BSD 3-Clause).
- Memcached is built for larger datasets (≤ 1 PB) than Dragonfly (≤ 10 TB).
- Horizontal scaling is native in Dragonfly and manual in Memcached.
- Transactions: Dragonfly offers limited ACID; Memcached offers none.
- Only Dragonfly has transactions, secondary indexes, full-text search, vector search, geospatial.
choose dragonfly for
- +Consolidating many Redis shards onto fewer large instances
- +High-throughput caching and session storage
- +BullMQ / Sidekiq style queue backends
- +Replacing Memcached and Redis with one engine
best at · Cache, Sessions, Queue
choose memcached for
- +Read-through caching of database query results
- +Rendered page and fragment caching
- +Session storage when losing sessions is acceptable
- +Very large, horizontally sharded look-aside cache tiers
best at · Cache, Sessions
Dragonfly vs Memcached: FAQ
What is the difference between Dragonfly and Memcached?
Dragonfly: A multi-threaded, shared-nothing in-memory store that speaks Redis and Memcached on one big box. Memcached: The original multi-threaded, dead-simple distributed memory cache for key-value blobs. Licensing: Dragonfly is source-available (Business Source License 1.1); Memcached is open source (permissive) (BSD 3-Clause). Memcached is built for larger datasets (≤ 1 PB) than Dragonfly (≤ 10 TB). Horizontal scaling is native in Dragonfly and manual in Memcached.
When should I choose Dragonfly over Memcached?
Choose Dragonfly for consolidating many Redis shards onto fewer large instances; high-throughput caching and session storage; and BullMQ / Sidekiq style queue backends. Choose Memcached for read-through caching of database query results; rendered page and fragment caching; and session storage when losing sessions is acceptable.
Is Dragonfly or Memcached more popular?
Memcached ranks #25 on the WhichDB Score (50.6/100) and Dragonfly ranks #150 (20.7/100). Popularity is not fit: check the requirements that matter for your project.
Are Dragonfly and Memcached open source?
Not in the OSI sense. Dragonfly is source-available: you can read the code, but the license restricts some uses, typically offering it as a competing managed service. License: Business Source License 1.1. Yes. Memcached is open source. License: BSD 3-Clause.