Fly.io vs Redis
Run your app close to users, globally
vs. The real-time data platform — in-memory DB + cache + vector + search
Pricing tiers
Fly.io
Pay-as-you-go
No monthly fee. Machines billed per second. Free allocations: ~3 small shared machines + 3 GB volumes.
$0 base (usage-based)
Shared CPU 1x — 256 MB
Entry VM. 1 shared vCPU, 256 MB RAM. ~$2.02/month continuously on.
$2/mo
Performance 1x — 2 GB
Dedicated 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM.
$32/mo
Reservation — Shared (1 yr)
$36/year for $5/mo credit (40% savings).
$36/mo
Shared CPU 8x — 16 GB
8 shared vCPU, 16 GB RAM.
$89/mo
Performance 16x — 128 GB
Dedicated 16 vCPU, 128 GB RAM.
$1014/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated capacity, SLA.
Custom
Redis
Free
30 MB. Single DB. Community support. AWS + GCP only.
Free
Redis OSS
BSD-licensed Redis (or source-available RSALv2 for newer). Self-host free.
$0 base (usage-based)
Essentials
From $5/mo. 250 MB to 100 GB. SAML SSO, RBAC, 99.99% uptime.
$5/mo
Pro
From $200/mo. Dedicated. Active-Active multi-region. Auto-tiering. 99.999% uptime.
$200/mo
Enterprise
Custom annual. SOC2, HIPAA, private deployment.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing pay-as-you-go on Fly.io vs free on Redis.
| Metric | Fly.io | Redis |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Fly.io · 14 features
- Auto Stop/Start — Machines auto-stop when idle, start on request (like scale-to-zero).
- Certs — Let's Encrypt + wildcard certs managed.
- Fly GPU — A100/L40S/A10 on-demand GPU machines.
- Fly Kubernetes (FKS) — Managed Kubernetes on Fly machines.
- Fly Machines — Firecracker microVMs. Start in <1s. Run any Docker image.
- Fly Postgres — Managed Postgres via Supabase partnership (2024). Also legacy self-run Postgres …
- fly-replay headers — Route request to another region at app level.
- Fly Volumes — Persistent SSD attached to a Machine. Encrypted at rest.
- Global Anycast — Single IP routes to the closest region automatically.
- LiteFS — Distributed SQLite with primary/replica across regions.
- Private Networks — 6PN WireGuard mesh. Connect machines across regions privately.
- Secrets — Encrypted env vars propagated to all regions.
- Tigris (partner) — S3-compatible storage for Fly apps. By partner.
- Upstash Redis (partner) — Managed Redis via Upstash.
Redis · 21 features
- Active-Active (CRDT) — Multi-region live-write replication.
- Auto-Tiering (Flex) — RAM + SSD tiered storage.
- Bitmaps + Bitfields — Compact boolean storage.
- Geo — Geospatial queries on lat/lon.
- Hashes — Field-value maps per key.
- HyperLogLog — Probabilistic cardinality.
- Lists — Linked list — push/pop/range.
- Lua Scripting — Server-side Lua + Functions.
- Pub/Sub — Channel-based messaging.
- RedisBloom — Bloom + Cuckoo + Count-Min Sketch + TopK.
- Redis Cluster — Horizontal sharding.
- RediSearch — Full-text + vector search engine.
- RedisInsight — Official GUI for Redis.
- RedisJSON — Native JSON document support.
- RedisTimeSeries — Time-series data type.
- Replication — Primary-replica async replication.
- Sets — Unique element sets.
- Sorted Sets (ZSet) — Score-ranked sets for leaderboards.
- Streams — Append-only log (Kafka-like).
- Strings — Primitive + binary-safe key-value.
- Transactions (MULTI/EXEC) — Atomic command batches.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Fly.io | Redis |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | flyctl CLI | redis-cli |
| SDK | — | go-redis, Jedis + Lettuce, node-redis, redis-py, redis-rs |
| REST | Machines API | Redis Cloud API |
| GRAPHQL | Fly GraphQL API | — |
| OTHER | Fly Postgres (wire) | RedisInsight GUI, RESP protocol |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Fly.io and Redis are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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