StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. In-Memory Databases
  4. In Memory Databases
  5. Redis vs SQLite

Redis vs SQLite

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Redis
Redis
Stacks61.9K
Followers46.5K
Votes3.9K
GitHub Stars42
Forks6
SQLite
SQLite
Stacks19.9K
Followers15.2K
Votes535

Redis vs SQLite: What are the differences?

Redis and SQLite are both widely used database systems. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Data Storage Model: Redis is primarily a key-value store, where each data entry is associated with a unique key. It allows for fast retrieval and storage of data, making it suitable for use cases that require high-performance caching or session management. On the other hand, SQLite follows a relational data model, allowing for structured storage of data in tables with relationships between them. This makes it more suitable for applications that require complex data querying and management.

  2. Data Persistence: Redis stores data primarily in memory, which allows for very fast read and write operations. However, this also means that data is not permanently stored and can be lost in the event of a server restart or crash. In contrast, SQLite stores data on disk, ensuring durability and persistence even after system failures.

  3. Scaling: Redis excels at horizontal scaling, allowing for the distribution of data across multiple nodes in a cluster. This makes it highly scalable for high-throughput applications that require large amounts of data processing. SQLite, on the other hand, is typically used as a single-user or embedded database and does not have built-in support for distributed architecture.

  4. Concurrency: Redis is designed to handle concurrent read and write operations efficiently, making it suitable for applications with high levels of concurrency. It achieves this through single-threaded architecture and asynchronous operations. SQLite, on the other hand, uses a multi-threaded model and supports concurrent read operations but requires serialization of write operations, which can impact performance in highly concurrent scenarios.

  5. Querying and Indexing: Redis provides basic querying capabilities through key lookups and support for data structures such as lists, sets, and sorted sets. However, it lacks advanced query features like joins and complex aggregations available in SQL-based databases. SQLite, being a full-fledged SQL-based database, offers advanced querying capabilities, including joins, aggregations, and the ability to create indexes for efficient data retrieval.

  6. Application Ecosystem: Redis is often used as a caching layer or a message broker in modern application architectures, where it complements other databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL. It has excellent support for various programming languages and frameworks, making it easy to integrate into existing applications. SQLite, on the other hand, is often used as an embedded database within applications or as a lightweight, file-based storage option.

In summary, Redis, a fast and in-memory key-value store, excels in caching and real-time data processing scenarios. SQLite, a lightweight embedded database, is well-suited for local storage in mobile applications or small-scale projects where simplicity and portability are priorities.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Redis, SQLite

Dimelo
Dimelo

Nov 5, 2020

Needs adviceonSQLiteSQLiteMySQLMySQLPostgreSQLPostgreSQL

I need to add a DBMS to my stack, but I don't know which. I'm tempted to learn SQLite since it would be useful to me with its focus on local access without concurrency. However, doing so feels like I would be defeating the purpose of trying to expand my skill set since it seems like most enterprise applications have the opposite requirements.

To be able to apply what I learn to more projects, what should I try to learn? MySQL? PostgreSQL? Something else? Is there a comfortable middle ground between high applicability and ease of use?

670k views670k
Comments
Stephen
Stephen

Senior DevOps Engineer at Vital Beats

Nov 9, 2020

Review

A question you might want to think about is "What kind of experience do I want to gain, by using a DBMS?". If your aim is to have experience with SQL and any related libraries and frameworks for your language of choice (python, I think?), then it kind of doesn't matter too much which you pick so much. As others have said, SQLite would offer you the ability to very easily get started, and would give you a reasonably standard (if a little basic) SQL dialect to work with.

If your aim is actually to have a bit of "operational" experience, in terms of things like what command line tools might be available as standard for the DBMS, understanding how the DBMS handles multiple databases, when to use multiple schemas vs multiple databases, some basic privilege management etc. Then I would recommend PostgreSQL. SQLite's simplicity actually avoids most of these experiences, which is not helpful to you if that is what you hope to learn. MySQL has a few "quirks" to how it manages things like multiple databases, which may lead you to making less good decisions if you tried to take your experience over to different DBMS, especially in bigger enterprise roles. PostgreSQL is kind of a happy middle ground here, with the ability to start PostgreSQL servers via docker or docker-compose making the actual day-to-day management pretty easy, while still giving you experience of the kinds of considerations I have listed above.

At Vital Beats we make use of PostgreSQL, largely because it offers us a happy balance between good management and backup of data, and good standard command line tools, which is essential for us where we are deploying our solutions within Kubernetes / docker, and so more graphical tools are not always appropriate for us. PostgreSQL is also pretty universally supported in terms of language libraries and frameworks, without having to make compromises on how we want to store and layout our data.

316k views316k
Comments
Anonymous
Anonymous

Oct 29, 2019

Needs advice

Hi everyone! I am a high school student, starting a massive project. I'm building a system for a boarding school to be better connected to their students and be more efficient with information. In the meantime, I am developing a website and an android app. What's the best datastore I can use? I need to be able to access student data on the app from the main database and send push notifications. Also feed updates. What's the best approach? What's the best tool I can use to deploy the website and the database? One for testing and prototyping, and an official one... Thanks in advance!!!!

366k views366k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Redis
Redis
SQLite
SQLite

Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. Redis provides data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams.

SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. Unlike most other SQL databases, SQLite does not have a separate server process. SQLite reads and writes directly to ordinary disk files. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
42
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
6
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
61.9K
Stacks
19.9K
Followers
46.5K
Followers
15.2K
Votes
3.9K
Votes
535
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 888
    Performance
  • 542
    Super fast
  • 514
    Ease of use
  • 444
    In-memory cache
  • 324
    Advanced key-value cache
Cons
  • 15
    Cannot query objects directly
  • 3
    No secondary indexes for non-numeric data types
  • 1
    No WAL
Pros
  • 163
    Lightweight
  • 135
    Portable
  • 122
    Simple
  • 81
    Sql
  • 29
    Preinstalled on iOS and Android
Cons
  • 2
    Not for multi-process of multithreaded apps
  • 1
    Needs different binaries for each platform

What are some alternatives to Redis, SQLite?

MongoDB

MongoDB

MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.

MySQL

MySQL

The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL Server is intended for mission-critical, heavy-load production systems as well as for embedding into mass-deployed software.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft® SQL Server is a database management and analysis system for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.

Cassandra

Cassandra

Partitioning means that Cassandra can distribute your data across multiple machines in an application-transparent matter. Cassandra will automatically repartition as machines are added and removed from the cluster. Row store means that like relational databases, Cassandra organizes data by rows and columns. The Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a close relative of SQL.

Memcached

Memcached

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

MariaDB

MariaDB

Started by core members of the original MySQL team, MariaDB actively works with outside developers to deliver the most featureful, stable, and sanely licensed open SQL server in the industry. MariaDB is designed as a drop-in replacement of MySQL(R) with more features, new storage engines, fewer bugs, and better performance.

RethinkDB

RethinkDB

RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very little effort. It has a pleasant query language that supports really useful queries like table joins and group by, and is easy to setup and learn.

ArangoDB

ArangoDB

A distributed free and open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values. Build high performance applications using a convenient SQL-like query language or JavaScript extensions.

InfluxDB

InfluxDB

InfluxDB is a scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics. It has a built-in HTTP API so you don't have to write any server side code to get up and running. InfluxDB is designed to be scalable, simple to install and manage, and fast to get data in and out.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase