# Garnet

> MIT Redis-protocol cache-store from Microsoft Research

**Category:** Databases  
**Pricing:** open-source  
**URL:** https://microsoft.github.io/garnet  
**GitHub:** https://github.com/microsoft/garnet  
**Added:** 2026-10-18

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## The Hook

Garnet is a remote cache-store from Microsoft Research that speaks the Redis RESP protocol, so unmodified Redis clients in most languages can talk to it, with a .NET server built for high throughput and low tail latency.

## What's Good

MIT (microsoft/garnet), release v2.2.3 (2026-10-16), runs on Linux and Windows. It covers strings, key expiry, HyperLogLog, bitmaps, sorted sets, lists, hashes and geo, plus Lua scripts, RESP transactions, server-side stored procedures and custom commands in C#. Its Tsavorite storage layer supports tiered storage (memory, SSD, cloud), checkpointing and recovery, and cluster mode adds sharding, replication and key migration. Vector sets backed by DiskANN are in preview. ★~12.1k.

## The Catch

RESP compatibility is not full Redis: check your exact commands and modules against Garnet's API docs before swapping it in. Custom extensions are written in C#/.NET, so this fits best in a .NET team. The headline latency numbers come from the project's own benchmarks on Azure VMs. The managed Azure Cosmos DB Garnet Cache is a separate paid service; the OSS server is free.

## Verdict

A serious MIT alternative to Redis when throughput per box matters — test your command set first.