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EMQX vs Redis comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.8
EMQX offers significant cost savings and scalability, with time savings evident, despite needing extra manpower for setup.
Sentiment score
7.3
Redis boosts performance and reduces costs, enhancing API latency and productivity while allowing focus on feature development.
I have seen a return on investment with money saved and time saved because the protocol is MQTT.
Industrial Digitalization Engineer
I have seen a return on investment by lowering the resource cost by half.
Java Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
We reduced the database read load by around 30 to 40 percent and improved API response time by 20 to 30 percent, specifically for frequently accessed endpoints.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
We have seen a positive return on investment from using Redis, mainly through improved application performance, reduced database load, and lower operational overhead.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.1
EMQX users primarily rely on excellent documentation and online resources, rarely needing customer support due to smooth operations.
Sentiment score
6.4
Redis users rarely need support due to stability, relying on documentation and community, with mixed experiences reported.
The documentation is exceptional and so developer-friendly that customer support is not needed.
Senior Software Engineer
We get prompt responses from them.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
I have not used customer support for EMQX because I can understand it on my own by watching tutorials on YouTube, even if they are not from the official EMQX customer service, so I am satisfied with self-learning.
Research Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
By simply referring to their documentation, we have been able to fix our bugs and general issues.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Since Redis is quite stable and well-documented, we have not needed much support, but when required, the response has been helpful.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
EMQX scales efficiently from thousands to millions of devices, praised for ease and features enhancing large-scale data management.
Sentiment score
7.8
Redis excels in scalability and efficiency, handling high traffic with clustering and sharding, benefiting enterprise application demands.
EMQX has handled growth from thousands of devices to millions of devices.
Senior Software Engineer
EMQX's scalability is perfect.
Research Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
When performance is high, we only need to add a node replica.
Java Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
The in-memory architecture provides consistently low-latency access even as data access patterns and request volume increase.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Data migration and changes to application-side configurations are challenging due to the lack of automatic migration tools in a non-clustered legacy system.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
With features such as clustering and replication, it can handle high traffic and a large database very effectively.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Users trust EMQX for its reliable, stable performance and consistent uptime in diverse production environments across organizations.
Sentiment score
7.9
Redis is lauded for its stability, reliable caching performance, and robust architecture, supported by strong community and managed services.
It is a production-grade tool that has been tested and is used in production by many organizations.
Senior Software Engineer
Redis has consistently provided fast and predictable performance, particularly for caching and high-frequency data access scenarios.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Redis is fairly stable.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

EMQX users seek improved cost, reliability, and features like SSL/TLS management, monitoring, and AI integration for enhanced support.
Redis users seek improvements in cache management, user interface, observability, scalability, security setup, and cloud integrations for enhanced usability.
A centralized dashboard where we can add multiple clusters in a single place would be easier to monitor.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
I think EMQX needs to improve its logs. When I encounter a problem with EMQX error messages, it is very difficult to trace the logs and find the real reason for the error to fix it.
Java Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
If there were an option to utilize serverless without that TLS and SSL overhead, the embedded system would not experience the overhead burden.
Saa S Company
Making security features and enterprise governance capabilities easier to configure out of the box would help organizations adopt Redis more confidently for larger and more critical workloads.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Data persistence and recovery face issues with compatibility across major versions, making upgrades possible but downgrades not active.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Redis is very reliable, but it could be improved in areas such as monitoring, debugging, and feasibility into memory use.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers value EMQX for its cost-effectiveness, leveraging open-source advantages and minimizing expenses through cloud providers like AWS.
Enterprise Redis costs vary by deployment model, with self-managed being cost-effective and cloud services charging for memory usage.
We do not need to pay for what we are not using.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
AWS costing for the product that is maintained is quite high.
Senior Software Engineer
EMQX is open-source and MQTT is also an open-source protocol, so the cost is less.
Industrial Digitalization Engineer
The main value comes from the performance improvements, reduced database load, and increased scalability that Redis provides.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Since we use an open-source version of Redis, we do not experience any setup costs or licensing expenses.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The pricing is reasonable for the performance provided.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Valuable Features

EMQX offers efficient, scalable communication with low resource use, supporting real-time interactions and easy IoT integration for organizations.
Redis is preferred for speed and reliability, offering low latency, high throughput, and efficient scaling with minimal configuration.
The pub/sub functionality and how publishers and subscribers interact with each other without disrupting the connection between devices and applications is outstanding.
Senior Software Engineer
After using EMQX, we can now handle a large amount of data within a fraction of seconds, which makes it very easy for us to pass the data and store it in our database, and we can easily visualize it in our UI.
Software Engineer at Bahwan CyberTek
EMQX allowed us to scale our product very easily, enabling us to add multiple nodes as needed and perform regional deployments such as a standby EMQX cluster.
Staff Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
It functions similarly to a foundational building block in a larger system, enabling native integration and high functionality in core data processes.
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
By offloading frequent reads from the database and enabling fast in-memory cache access, it reduced latency, improved throughput, and helped maintain stability during peak loads.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
The most valuable features include high-speed in-memory data access, flexible data structures, caching capabilities, data expiration and time-to-live management, high availability and scalability, and atomic operations.
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

EMQX
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (5th), IoT Connectivity (1st)
Redis
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (5th), In-Memory Data Store Services (1st), Vector Databases (3rd), AI Software Development (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

AP
Senior Software Engineer
Connected millions of iot devices and manage real time pub sub control and flexible access rules
When going with the open-source EMQX version, there are limitations provided. For example, the webhooks use case cannot be scaled to as large a scale compared to the enterprise edition of EMQX. The open-source version helps a great deal with work in the company. The way this resource helps nurture the IoT device paradigm is greatly helpful for developers working newly on this system because the onboarding part of EMQX is very easy and developer-friendly. Someone who wants to dive into it can easily implement and make the system robust based on the technologies it provides. EMQX provides API connections for applications. HTTP calls can be made to EMQX to get updates from the client. Those connections should be made asynchronously. The webhook part handles this well, but when it comes to the API part, when the load and payload of the MQTT topics and messages are very heavy, sometimes unknown errors occur, and logs and errors must be found. When a specific log session is created for that client, the readability of those logs is not good. The platform itself does not need improvement, but when it comes to developer-friendly implementations of EMQX, there are some pain points that need attention. The visibility of logs, error logs, and information logs inside the built-in monitoring needs work because developers, when they implement code or any kind of specific tools, need proper control over the system. Without that control, there is no point in implementing anything at all. The monitoring part needs work. When it comes to the flow chart of how different clients are connected with different devices, there is a feature inside EMQX called Flow. When that Flow is in place, clients (devices) should be controllable from that Flow itself. These are the most important improvements that need to be addressed.
RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Caching has improved response times and reduces database load for high-traffic applications
Redis is very reliable, but it could be improved in areas such as monitoring, debugging, and feasibility into memory use. Better built-in tools for observability would help teams manage it more effectively at scale. Managing memory efficiently and troubleshooting issues can sometimes require additional tooling, so these areas can also be improved.One practical challenge I experienced is managing memory efficiently. Since Redis is in-memory, we need to carefully configure eviction policies and monitor usage. Debugging cache-related issues such as stale data or cache invalidation can sometimes be tricky. Additionally, tuning memory usage and eviction policies needs to be planned very carefully.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Media Company
20%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Legal Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for EMQX?
My experience with EMQX regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that it is affordable.
What needs improvement with EMQX?
I think EMQX can be improved, but to be honest, I don't have anything I'd like to see added or changed. In terms of needed improvements, I don't have anything else to add, even small ones or nice-t...
What is your primary use case for EMQX?
My main use case for EMQX is a stable and scalable IoT message queue. I use EMQX in one of my projects specifically with ESP32 and Argon and Boron embedded chips, and I program them to send and rec...
What needs improvement with Redis?
Making management easier, especially for teams operating large Redis clusters, would be helpful. More advanced built-in observability, performance insights, and automated recommendations would help...
What is your primary use case for Redis?
Redis is used primarily as a caching layer to provide a high-performance caching solution that improves application response times and reduces load on backend services and databases. We use it main...
What advice do you have for others considering Redis?
There are a couple of things to consider when using Redis. It is a supporting layer, not a main database. Identifying specific use cases where Redis can provide the most value, such as caching, ses...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Redis Enterprise
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Twitter 2. GitHub 3. StackOverflow 4. Pinterest 5. Snapchat 6. Craigslist 7. Digg 8. Weibo 9. Airbnb 10. Uber 11. Slack 12. Trello 13. Shopify 14. Coursera 15. Medium 16. Twitch 17. Foursquare 18. Meetup 19. Kickstarter 20. Docker 21. Heroku 22. Bitbucket 23. Groupon 24. Flipboard 25. SoundCloud 26. BuzzFeed 27. Disqus 28. The New York Times 29. Walmart 30. Nike 31. Sony 32. Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: August 2026.
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