DAdatadeft·Oct 15, 2023Submission
3 points · Open discussiondragonflydb
dragonfly
C++2022–2026
dragonflydb / dragonfly
dragonfly
A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached
29Distinct people
37Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
31.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- skytable/skytable · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- snapchat/keydb · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- apache/kvrocks · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:49:33 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year37 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-05-30 16:18:35 UTC to 2026-10-13 14:27:54 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 2 | 12 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 3 | 11 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesI recently ran across the the license for Dragonfly [1] which has some restrictions (rights reserved), but 5 years after the license date the license switches to Apache 2.0. Basically a time-limited rights reservation. I don't hate it. I might even contribute to such a project for free.
I propose something like this: When I release code, it's rights-reserved for 5 years, then open-source (and this particular clause would be irrevocable). Anyone may use the software for non-commercial purposes. Anyone may contribute, those who contribute will be granted permission for commercial use if I deem their contributions significant enough. Anyone may distribute the software under these terms.
If such a model became popular, I have a hard time imagining it could make things any worse. It might even accelerate open-source development by shifting soc
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ieties resources to those who are actually producing this valuable software.
You might say, "but it's not open-source", fair enough, but we can view it as open-source contribution with a delay. For example, if this model became widely popular this year, and we saw great progress with this model, then come 2028 we would be flooded with new open-source software and ultimately might be better off than we would have been without this model.
Ultimately people choose to make their software open-source for moral reasons, and because they hope that by giving they might receive in turn--I contribute, you contribute, and we share freely (and we're both poor). This model I've talked about still achieves similar goals. People might still be willing to contribute, even for free, because I have given them an irrevocable legal promise that their contributions will be made available to all at a specific time.
(This whole thing makes me rethink copyright and patents and how much they really contribute to society. Perhaps their terms should be shortened?)
[1]: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.m...
Dragonfly is about 10x slower than Redis
3 points · Open discussion1. We removed the FAQ page
2. You are right, I need to shut the fuck up and let self-righteous hn crowd with torches do what they do best - find a weakness, and push it until they get bored and switch to beat another builder. You asked me about my perspectives and priorities? These are my priorities: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/graphs/contributors
3. The first thing I did was on this thread was to apologize for having FAQ with such content.
In Dragonfly – Performant in-memory data storeI personally benchmarked Dragonfly vs Memcached. Are you calling me a liar? :)
Do you think I also photoshopped this document? https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/master/docs/me...
In KeyDB – A Multithreaded Fork of Redishmm and ships are designed to sail, yet you use planes to cross atlantic.
Nokia was designed as strongest and most affordable phone, yet you use Iphone that costs 1000$. it's not about how it was designed but whether it addresses your current needs. Developers do not want to manage a cluster of single cpu processes. Not on their laptops and not in the production. And it's not just about management complexity. See this https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/issues/1229 and it's just one example. Single cpu - is just not enough for today use-cases.
In Dragonfly – Performant in-memory data storeThe v1.3.0 version was released 3 days ago.
https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/releases/tag/v1.3.0
If you want to integrate it, you also need to check the Software License.
https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.m...
Dragonfly Business Source License 1.1
License: BSL 1.1
Licensor: DragonflyDB, Ltd.
Licensed Work: Dragonfly including the software components, or any portion of them, and any modification.
Change Date: March 15, 2028
Change License: Apache License, Version 2.0, as published by the Apache Foundation.
Additional Use Grant: You may make use of the Licensed Work (i) only as part of your own product or service, provided it is not an in-memory data store product or service; and (ii) provided that you do not use, provide, distribute, or make available the Licensed Work as a Service. A “Service” is a commerc
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ial offering, product, hosted, or managed service, that allows third parties (other than your own employees and contractors acting on your behalf) to access and/or use the Licensed Work or a substantial set of the features or functionality of the Licensed Work to third parties as a software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service or other similar services that compete with Licensor products or services.
...
Unlikely, it's not even open source: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.m...
In KeyDB – A Multithreaded Fork of RedisI think this is relevant... These are 3 OSS databases that can be an alternative to Redis:
- KeyDB: https://github.com/snapchat/keydb
- Dragonfly: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly
- Skytable: https://github.com/skytable/skytable
I have used keyDB before. The raft consensus makes building an HA Redis easy.
In LMDB: The first version of Redis, written in Tcl (2009)License: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/blob/main/LICENSE.m...
It is source available. Generally can't use it to create a competing product... but also means you cannot combine it with any of the popular open source licenses.
Decide for yourself what that means to you.
In Dragonfly Is Production Ready (and we raised $21M)Dragonfly is better with
1. Memory utilization (read the announcement, they mention it)
2. Deployment/orchestration - your initial threshold that forces you to scale horizontally just went up by order of magnitude. In fact for many use-cases you will never need to go horizontally with Dragonfly.
3. Dragonfly also provides a better experience when working with the system. Just a week ago one of the community contributors submitted a PR that introduces automatic recognition of the hot keys: https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly/pull/951 (this feature is not ready for production use yet but we will get there).
It also has a built-in open-metrics support, built in cpu-profiler support, fully asynchronous I/O that allows answering INFO commands even under load etc.
In Dragonfly Is Production Ready (and we raised $21M)not closed source https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly
In Dragonfly Is Production Ready (and we raised $21M)Ouch C++ https://github.com/dragonflydb/dragonfly why not rust?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33436268
In Dragonfly, a startup developing a ‘drop-in’ replacement for Redis, raises $21M