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Memcached vs Riak

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Memcached
7.6K
5.5K
+ 1
473
Riak
104
136
+ 1
44
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Memcached vs Riak: What are the differences?

Memcached: High-performance, distributed memory object caching system. 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; Riak: A distributed, decentralized data storage system. Riak is a distributed database designed to deliver maximum data availability by distributing data across multiple servers. As long as your client can reach one Riak server, it should be able to write data. In most failure scenarios, the data you want to read should be available, although it may not be the most up-to-date version of that data.

Memcached and Riak belong to "Databases" category of the tech stack.

"Fast object cache" is the top reason why over 133 developers like Memcached, while over 9 developers mention "High Performance " as the leading cause for choosing Riak.

Memcached and Riak are both open source tools. Memcached with 8.99K GitHub stars and 2.6K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Riak with 3.24K GitHub stars and 530 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Memcached has a broader approval, being mentioned in 755 company stacks & 267 developers stacks; compared to Riak, which is listed in 15 company stacks and 10 developer stacks.

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Pros of Memcached
Pros of Riak
  • 139
    Fast object cache
  • 129
    High-performance
  • 91
    Stable
  • 65
    Mature
  • 33
    Distributed caching system
  • 11
    Improved response time and throughput
  • 3
    Great for caching HTML
  • 2
    Putta
  • 14
    High Performance
  • 11
    High Availability
  • 9
    Easy Scalability
  • 5
    Flexible
  • 1
    Strong Consistency
  • 1
    Eventual Consistency
  • 1
    Distributed
  • 1
    Multi datacenter deployments
  • 1
    Reliable

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Cons of Memcached
Cons of Riak
  • 2
    Only caches simple types
    Be the first to leave a con

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    What is 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.

    What is Riak?

    Riak is a distributed database designed to deliver maximum data availability by distributing data across multiple servers. As long as your client can reach one Riak server, it should be able to write data. In most failure scenarios, the data you want to read should be available, although it may not be the most up-to-date version of that data.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    Jobs that mention Memcached and Riak as a desired skillset
    Manager I, Site Reliability Engineering
    Pinterest
    San Francisco, CA, US; , CA, US
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    DreamLinuxEnvoy+18
    Manager I, Site Reliability Engineering
    Pinterest
    San Francisco, CA, US; , CA, US
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    DreamLinuxEnvoy+18
    Senior Software Engineer, Big Data
    Pinterest
    San Francisco, CA, US; , CA, US
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    DreamTrinoAirflow+11
    Staff Software Engineer - Site Reliability
    Pinterest
    Toronto, ON, CA
    View Job Details
    SpeedDreamLinux+20
    Staff Software Engineer - Site Reliability
    Pinterest
    Toronto, ON, CA
    View Job Details
    SpeedDreamLinux+20
    Staff Software Engineer - Site Reliability
    Pinterest
    Toronto, ON, CA
    View Job Details
    SpeedDreamLinux+20
    Sr. Machine Learning Engineer
    Pinterest
    Toronto, ON, CA
    View Job Details
    DreamHadoop+2
    Staff Software Engineer, Ads Serving Platform
    Pinterest
    San Francisco, CA, US; , US
    View Job Details
    guidanceInfraDream+9
    What companies use Memcached?
    What companies use Riak?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Memcached or Riak.
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    What tools integrate with Memcached?
    What tools integrate with Riak?

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    Blog Posts

    Improving Distributed Caching Performance and Efficiency at Pi...
    Jun 1 2022 at 5:03PM

    Pinterest

    Amazon EC2MemcachedLinux+4
    6
    928
    Scaling Cache Infrastructure at Pinterest
    Dec 22 2020 at 9:26PM

    Pinterest

    Amazon EC2C langMemcached+4
    10
    2627
    How Sqreen handles 50,000 requests every minute in a write-hea...
    Sep 17 2019 at 9:38PM

    Sqreen

    GitHubDockerReact+17
    16
    6808
    Kafka and Ruby, a Sidekiq Love Story
    Jun 6 2019 at 5:11PM

    AppSignal

    RedisRubyKafka+9
    15
    1644
    E-Commerce at Scale: Inside Shopify's Tech Stack
    Jul 3 2018 at 4:40AM

    Shopify

    GitHubDockerReact+17
    40
    36279
    Dubsmash: Scaling To 200 Million Users With 3 Engineers
    Dec 14 2017 at 10:02AM

    Dubsmash

    GitHubPythonNode.js+47
    54
    72319
    How Sentry Receives 20 Billion Events Per Month While Preparin...
    Nov 8 2017 at 5:09PM

    Sentry

    JavaScriptGitHubPython+31
    28
    36774
    How MapJam Is Building A Scalable Custom Maps Service
    Jul 29 2016 at 2:27AM

    MapJam

    JavaScriptGitHubNode.js+26
    20
    4952
    What are some alternatives to Memcached and Riak?
    Redis
    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.
    Ehcache
    Ehcache is an open source, standards-based cache for boosting performance, offloading your database, and simplifying scalability. It's the most widely-used Java-based cache because it's robust, proven, and full-featured. Ehcache scales from in-process, with one or more nodes, all the way to mixed in-process/out-of-process configurations with terabyte-sized caches.
    Varnish
    Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator also known as a caching HTTP reverse proxy. You install it in front of any server that speaks HTTP and configure it to cache the contents. Varnish Cache is really, really fast. It typically speeds up delivery with a factor of 300 - 1000x, depending on your architecture.
    Hazelcast
    With its various distributed data structures, distributed caching capabilities, elastic nature, memcache support, integration with Spring and Hibernate and more importantly with so many happy users, Hazelcast is feature-rich, enterprise-ready and developer-friendly in-memory data grid solution.
    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.
    See all alternatives

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