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redis/go-redis

Analysis updated 2026-06-21

★ 22,074GoAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · easy

TLDR

go-redis is the official Go client library for Redis, letting your Go apps talk to Redis for caching, pub/sub messaging, transactions, and scripting with automatic connection pooling and retry logic.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((go-redis))
    What it does
      Redis client for Go
      Connection pooling
      Auto retry
    Features
      Pub/Sub messaging
      Pipelines
      Lua scripting
    Use Cases
      Caching
      Session storage
      Rate limiting
    Cluster Support
      Redis Sentinel
      Redis Cluster
    Auth
      Dynamic credentials
      Entra ID support
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Code map

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filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Cache API responses in a Go web server by storing results in Redis and fetching them on repeat requests.

USE CASE 2

Store user session data in Redis so multiple Go service instances can share state.

USE CASE 3

Implement distributed rate limiting or locking in a Go microservice using Redis and companion packages.

USE CASE 4

Publish and subscribe to real-time events between Go services using Redis Pub/Sub.

What is it built with?

Go

How does it compare?

redis/go-redisgo-chi/chifilosottile/age
Stars22,07422,11722,198
LanguageGoGoGo
Setup difficultyeasyeasyeasy
Complexity2/52/52/5
Audiencedeveloperdeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Requires Go 1.24+ and a running Redis 7.0+ server, install with go get github.com/redis/go-redis/v9.

In plain English

go-redis is the official client library for Redis written in the Go programming language. Redis is a popular in-memory data store often used as a cache, a message broker, or a fast key-value database, a client library is the piece of code your application uses to talk to it. The README states that go-redis offers a straightforward interface for interacting with Redis servers, and it targets the last three Redis releases (currently Redis 8.0, 8.2, and 8.4 community editions). Although the go.mod requires at minimum Go 1.24, the CI also runs against older and newer Go versions, and the library should work with any Redis 7.0+, even if older versions are not officially supported. The way it works is that you create a client object, redis.NewClient with an address, optional password, and database number, and then call methods on it that correspond to Redis commands like Set and Get. Behind the scenes, the library handles automatic connection pooling so your application reuses TCP connections instead of opening one per request, and the pool can retry failed dials with a configurable number of attempts and an optional exponential-backoff hook. The README lists support for almost all Redis commands (except QUIT and SYNC), Pub/Sub messaging, pipelines and transactions for batching commands, Lua scripting, Redis Sentinel and Redis Cluster topologies, performance monitoring, probabilistic data types from RedisStack, and customizable read and write buffer sizes. Authentication has a clear priority order, including an experimental StreamingCredentialsProvider that allows dynamic credential updates during the lifetime of a connection, useful for managed-identity services such as Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), through a separate go-redis-entraid package. You would reach for this any time a Go application needs to talk to Redis: caching responses, storing session data, queueing background jobs, sharing state between services, or running distributed locks and rate limiters (the README points to companion packages like redislock, go-redis/cache, and redis_rate). Installation is a single go get of github.com/redis/go-redis/v9 after initialising a Go module.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Write a Go function using go-redis v9 that caches the result of an expensive database query in Redis with a 5-minute TTL.
Prompt 2
Show me how to set up a Redis connection pool in go-redis with retry logic and exponential backoff for a production Go service.
Prompt 3
How do I use Redis pipelines in go-redis to batch multiple SET commands in a single network round-trip?
Prompt 4
Write a Go distributed lock using go-redis and the redislock package to prevent concurrent execution of a background job.
Prompt 5
How do I configure go-redis for Redis Cluster so my app automatically routes commands to the right shard?

Frequently asked questions

What is go-redis?

go-redis is the official Go client library for Redis, letting your Go apps talk to Redis for caching, pub/sub messaging, transactions, and scripting with automatic connection pooling and retry logic.

What language is go-redis written in?

Mainly Go. The stack also includes Go.

How hard is go-redis to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is go-redis for?

Mainly developer.

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