Free Redis Hosting 2026: 8 Options Compared from India

Every free Redis tier is small, and that is not the catch. The catch is what happens when you are not looking: a database deleted after 14 quiet days, a cache that comes back empty after a restart, a monthly command allowance that one queue worker uses up in a week, or a store in Singapore that turns your cache into the slowest part of the request.

This page compares free Redis hosting the way you would actually use it: as a cache, a session store or a job queue behind an app that has to keep working. We run a Redis-compatible store in Mumbai, so we did not only read pricing pages. Every limit below was checked against the provider’s own documentation on 7 November 2026, and every latency number was measured by us on the same day, from a home broadband connection in India and from a server in Mumbai.

On this page

• Which free tier fits which job
• Free Redis hosting compared: 8 options
• Latency from India, measured
• Why a far-away cache is worse than no cache
• Four ways a free key value store lets you down
• What 500,000 commands a month really buys
• Is Redis free? The licence change and Valkey
• Create a free key value store in Mumbai on Voroa
• FAQ

Which free tier fits which job

• Learning Redis commands, or a weekend project: Redis Cloud. It is the official service, the console is good, and 30 MB is plenty to learn on. Use it at least once every 14 days or it is deleted.
• A serverless app (Vercel, Netlify, edge functions): Upstash. It answers over HTTP as well as the Redis protocol, so a function does not have to hold a connection open. Watch the 500,000 commands a month.
• A cache you can afford to lose: Render’s free Key Value, if your app is also on Render. It keeps nothing on disk, so every restart empties it.
• Sessions or a queue that must survive a restart: pick a tier that writes to disk. Upstash, Aiven, Layerbase and Voroa do; Render’s free tier does not.
• Your app runs in India: put the store in Mumbai, next to the app. From a server in Mumbai we measured about 9 ms to Mumbai and about 86 ms to Singapore, per round trip.

Free Redis hosting compared: 8 options

Every option we could verify, with limits as published by each provider on 7 November 2026. Sources: Upstash pricing and FAQ, Redis Cloud Essentials plans, the Redis Cloud inactivity policy, Aiven’s free plan page, Render free instances, Railway’s trial terms, Layerbase’s plan page, the AWS Free Tier page, and Voroa free instances.

Three notes on the table. Aiven, Render and Voroa run Valkey or a Redis-compatible engine rather than Redis Ltd’s own build; your client library does not notice the difference for everyday commands. AWS needs a payment card at sign-up and its free period ends. Upstash also hands out an unclaimed database through a single HTTP request with no sign-up, but that one is deleted after 3 days unless you claim it into an account.

Latency from India, measured

We timed TCP connections to each region, 15 attempts each, and report the median. A TCP connect is one network round trip, which is the floor for every command you send. For Render we timed its public key value endpoints. Upstash, Redis Cloud and ElastiCache all run their Mumbai and Singapore databases inside AWS, so for those we timed the AWS regional endpoints as the baseline; we assume a database in the same region adds little to it, but we did not measure each provider’s own endpoint. For Voroa we timed the public address of our Mumbai database host on port 443.

From a home broadband connection in India

From a server in Mumbai (where your app runs, if you host it in India)

An app on Voroa does not go out to the internet to reach its key value store at all. It connects over the private network inside the Mumbai region, using the internal address on the database page.

Why a far-away cache is worse than no cache

You add Redis to make a request faster. Whether it does depends almost entirely on distance.

A cache read is one round trip. A query against a Postgres database next to your app is also roughly one round trip plus a few milliseconds of work. If the database is in Mumbai and the cache is in Singapore, the “fast” path is now 86 ms and the “slow” path is about 10 ms. The cache made the page slower, and every cache miss pays for both trips.

It adds up because a request rarely sends one command. A typical page checks the session, reads a rate limit counter, increments it and reads one cached fragment. Four commands sent one after another cost about 36 ms with the store in Mumbai and about 344 ms with it in Singapore, before your code has done anything.

Two habits help wherever the store is:

• Pipeline. Send several commands in one round trip. Most clients support it; in redis-py it is r.pipeline(), in ioredis it is redis.pipeline().
• Keep connections open. A new TLS connection costs several round trips before the first command. A long-running server opens its connections once. A serverless function that connects on every call should use an HTTP-based client, which is exactly what Upstash’s REST API is for.

The real rule is simpler than either habit: put the cache in the same region as the app.

Four ways a free key value store lets you down

Free tiers fail in one of four ways. Knowing which one applies tells you more than the memory figure.

1. It forgets. Render’s free Key Value keeps everything in memory only. Render can restart it for maintenance at any time, and when it does, every key is gone. Upgrading to a paid plan also loses the data. That is fine for a cache your app can rebuild, and wrong for sessions: every restart logs out every user.

2. It sleeps. Layerbase hibernates a free database after 15 minutes without connections. The next connection wakes it in roughly 1 to 5 seconds. Nothing is lost; the first request after a quiet spell waits.

3. It hits a wall. Each tier has a hard number that changes behaviour without warning your users:

• Memory. When a store is full it either refuses writes with OOM command not allowed when used memory > 'maxmemory', or evicts keys to make room, depending on its eviction policy. Check which one you have. Evicting is right for a cache and wrong for a queue.
• Commands. Upstash’s free tier allows 500,000 commands a month (the maths is below).
• Throughput. Redis Cloud’s free database is capped at 100 operations per second.
• Connections. Redis Cloud allows 30, Layerbase 20. A web server with a pool of 10, a worker and a scheduler can reach that sooner than you expect, and the next client gets ERR max number of clients reached.

4. It goes when idle. Redis Cloud deletes a free database after 14 days in which no command reaches it. Logging in to the console does not count. There is no backup, so the data is gone. Upstash archives a free database after at least 30 days of inactivity and lets you restore it. Layerbase archives a database after 14 days hibernated and reclaims it after 90 days archived. Aiven does not delete a free service, but powers it off when it is not being used, after a notice by email. If your project is quiet for a fortnight, these are the tiers that bite.

What 500,000 commands a month really buys

Half a million sounds like a lot. Spread over a month it is about 16,700 commands a day, or 11 a minute.

What uses commands is often not your users:

• A queue worker that polls once a second sends 2.6 million commands a month on its own, five times the free allowance.
• A health check that pings the store every 10 seconds uses about 260,000 a month.
• A page that sends four commands per view runs out at around 125,000 page views a month.

If a background worker is part of your design, a tier that meters commands is the wrong fit, however much memory it has. Pick one that limits memory and connections instead, and pair the store with a background worker in the same region so the polling never leaves the data centre.

Is Redis free? The licence change and Valkey

Is Redis free? Yes, to use. Redis 8 and later is offered under a choice of three licences, one of which is the AGPLv3, an open source licence. You can run it, build a product on it and charge for that product without paying Redis Ltd. What changed is the licence for companies that sell Redis itself as a hosted service.

The history, from the official Redis licence page:

Is Redis free for commercial use? Using Redis inside your own application, commercial or not, has been free under every one of those licences. The restrictions in RSALv2 and SSPLv1 are aimed at offering Redis to others as a managed service.

What is Valkey? When Redis moved away from BSD in 2024, a group of contributors forked the last BSD version and started Valkey under the Linux Foundation. Valkey stays BSD-licensed and speaks the same protocol, so the same client libraries work against it. Many hosts, including several on this list, now run Valkey under a “Redis-compatible” label.

For your app, the practical answer is the same as for Postgres: the software costs nothing, the machine it runs on does. A free tier is a provider paying for a small machine on your behalf, and the catches above are how they keep that cost bounded.

Create a free key value store in Mumbai on Voroa

Voroa’s free plan includes one managed key value store per account: 128 MB of RAM, up to 50 connections, in Mumbai, with no card. It writes your data to disk and takes a nightly snapshot, so a restart does not start from empty.

The trade-offs are real. 128 MB is small, so it suits sessions, rate limits and a modest cache rather than a large dataset. Free services and free databases in a workspace share 750 running hours a month; a free store on its own uses about 744, but a free store plus a free web service running all month use them up in about 16 days, after which free services stop until the 1st. And free database capacity is shared across the platform, so if it is full, a new free store is refused with a clear message instead of being queued. The free tier rules list every limit.

Step 1. In the dashboard select New, then Key Value.

Step 2. Name it and pick the free size. Under When memory is full, keep Keep everything if every key matters, or choose a drop option if the store is only a cache.

Step 3. Copy the connection URL shown at create time. It is shown once.

Step 4. Add it to your service as an environment variable, for example REDIS_URL.

Step 5. Point your existing client at it. No other code change is needed:

// Node.js, with the redis package
import { createClient } from 'redis';
const client = createClient({ url: process.env.REDIS_URL });
await client.connect();
await client.set('greeting', 'namaste', { EX: 60 });

# Python, with redis-py
import os, redis
r = redis.from_url(os.environ["REDIS_URL"])
r.set("greeting", "namaste", ex=60)

To reach it from your laptop or an app hosted elsewhere, turn on external access on the database page and you get a TLS (rediss://) endpoint. What each setting does, including the read-only Data tab for browsing keys, is in the Key Value guide. Moving data in from another host is covered in importing an existing database.

FAQ

Is there a completely free Redis server online? Yes. Upstash, Redis Cloud, Aiven, Render, Layerbase and Voroa all offer a free tier with no end date. Each has a catch: a command allowance, deletion when idle, a power-off, no persistence, hibernation or a small memory size.

Which free Redis cloud tier does not delete my data when I am away? Render and Voroa have no inactivity deletion today, and Aiven only powers a quiet service off. Upstash archives after 30 days and lets you restore. Layerbase archives after 14 days hibernated and reclaims the database after 90 days archived. Redis Cloud deletes a free database after 14 days without commands, with no backup.

Can I get free Redis hosted in India? Upstash, Redis Cloud and Voroa let you put a free database in Mumbai. AWS Mumbai is free only during its credit-based trial. Render and Railway are closest in Singapore, and Aiven does not let you pick a region on its free plan.

Which free tier keeps data after a restart? Upstash, Aiven, Layerbase and Voroa write to disk. Render’s free Key Value does not. Redis Cloud’s free database has no backups, so a deleted free database cannot be recovered.

Is the Redis free tier enough for sessions in production? For a small app, often yes, if the store keeps data on disk and sits next to your app. Size it for your active sessions, not your total users, and give sessions an expiry so old ones clear themselves.

What should I use instead of Redis for permanent data? A real database. Redis keeps data in memory, and even with disk persistence the last moments before a crash can be lost. Keep what you cannot rebuild in Postgres; our free Postgres comparison covers the same ground for databases.

Get a free key value store in Mumbai

One free store per account, 128 MB, no card, kept on disk, in Mumbai. See every size and what it costs on the managed Redis page.

Last updated: 7 November 2026. We re-check every limit and re-run every measurement monthly. If a provider has changed something we missed, write to support@getvoroa.com and we will correct it.