Redis 8.0 GA: New Data Structures, Performance Boosts, and Open‑Source Return

Redis 8.0 GA was released, bringing performance improvements, new data structures, and a return to open source under AGPLv3.

Back to Open Source

In March 2024 Redis switched its license from BSD to a dual RSALv2/SSPLv1 model, causing community concern. Redis 8.0 adds the OSI‑approved AGPLv3 as an additional licensing option and renames the free edition to “Redis Open Source”.

New Data Structures

Vector Set (Beta) : Designed for AI applications, stores and queries high‑dimensional vector embeddings, enhancing similarity, semantic search and recommendation scenarios.

Native JSON support : Allows storing and manipulating JSON documents directly in Redis with JSONPath‑based commands.

Five probabilistic data structures :

Bloom filter & Cuckoo filter – membership tests with false‑positive rate.

Count‑min sketch – frequency estimation in data streams.

Top‑k – finds the K most frequent elements.

t‑digest – estimates quantiles of numeric data streams.

Redis Query Engine Enhancements

Secondary indexes can now be created on Hash and JSON structures, enabling exact match, range queries, full‑text search (with stemming, synonyms, fuzzy matching) and vector similarity search.

Performance Improvements

Compared with Redis 7.2.5, Redis 8.0 introduces over 30 performance optimizations, reducing latency of up to 90 common commands by 5.4%‑87.4%.

The I/O thread implementation is refined; configuring

io-threads

(e.g., 8) on multi‑core CPUs can increase throughput by up to 112% (about double).

A new replication mechanism speeds up master‑slave synchronization, especially for large datasets.

Visualization Tools

Redis Insight and Redis for VS Code fully support Redis 8.0, and Redis Insight integrates Redis Copilot, an AI assistant for natural‑language data and command handling.

Conclusion

Redis 8.0 is a milestone release that returns to open source under AGPLv3 and adds practical new features and performance gains. More details are available in the official Redis 8.0 announcement.