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Valkey

What is Valkey?​

Valkey is the community-driven fork of Redis, created after Redis's 2024 license change moved it away from an open-source license. Valkey stays fully protocol-compatible with Redis, so any Redis client, including Laravel's, works against it unmodified.

Start Valkey​

docker compose up -d valkey

Stop Valkey​

docker compose stop valkey

This stops the container without deleting its data. To remove the container (data on disk is untouched, it lives under DATA_PATH_HOST): docker compose rm -f valkey.

Configuration​

All settings live in valkey/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
VALKEY_VERSION8-alpineImage tag from Valkey's Docker Hub.
VALKEY_PORT6380Host-side port Valkey is published on (host:container). Deliberately not 6379, so it can run alongside the redis service.

Use Valkey from Laravel​

Point any Redis client at it the same way you would Redis. In your Laravel .env:

REDIS_HOST=valkey
REDIS_PORT=6379

Note the app-side REDIS_PORT here is the container-internal port (6379), not VALKEY_PORT, containers talk to each other over the internal network, not the host-published port.

Connect from your host machine​

Inside Laradock, other containers reach it by container name: valkey:6379. From your own machine, connect to localhost:6380 (or your custom VALKEY_PORT) with any Redis-compatible GUI like TablePlus or RedisInsight.

Common issues​

  • App can't connect but the container is running. Confirm the app's config uses valkey (the container name) as the host, not localhost or 127.0.0.1, those only work from your host machine, not from inside another container.
  • Confusing VALKEY_PORT with the internal port. VALKEY_PORT (default 6380) is only the host-side mapping. From inside another container, Valkey is always reachable on port 6379.
  • Port already in use on your host. Another local Valkey/Redis (or another Laradock project) is already bound to 6380. Change VALKEY_PORT in .env and restart: docker compose up -d valkey.
  • Running both redis and valkey together. They're separate containers with separate data (DATA_PATH_HOST/valkey vs DATA_PATH_HOST/redis), decide which one your app actually points at before debugging "missing" cache data.

Prefer upstream Redis instead? See Redis. Want an even higher-throughput alternative? See Dragonfly. New to Laradock? Start at Getting Started.