Memorystore for Valkey vs Momento: decide who owns the next resize

Choose Google Cloud Memorystore for Valkey when your cache belongs in Google Cloud and your team wants control over node shapes and scaling automation. Consider Momento Cache when recurring topology decisions are work you want to hand off. Momento Cluster and Flex both include built-in autoscaling. Cluster exposes topology choices, while Flex selects topology within your capacity and replication bounds. Momento’s Google Cloud availability is in preview.

At a glance

About Google Cloud Memorystore

Google Cloud Memorystore for Valkey is a managed caching service built on Valkey. It offers cluster-enabled and cluster-disabled deployments in Google Cloud, with customers choosing node types, capacity, and topology. Memorystore for Redis and Redis Cluster are separate related offerings.

Recent updates

September 24, 2026 - Google made its current Valkey 9 release generally available. That release is also the current default. Both services now offer the same engine major, so capacity ownership and client integration carry this comparison. Existing Memorystore instances can upgrade, but cannot downgrade afterward.

September 2, 2026 - Momento introduced Cluster and Flex capacity for Momento Cache. Both provide dedicated, managed Valkey resources. Cluster exposes topology choices, while Flex selects topology within capacity bounds, giving teams a choice in how they configure capacity while Momento operates the cluster.

Give the application room to grow without choosing every node

Memorystore’s clustered deployments offer six regular node types with predefined amounts of CPU and memory. Your team selects node types and shard counts. The Memorystore Cluster Autoscaler can automate shard-count changes from CPU and memory metrics. Your team deploys and configures that automation.

For workloads that rely on eviction, Google’s scaling guidance warns against reducing CPU or memory because memory spikes can block operations. Resharding can also increase latency while availability is maintained.

If each traffic event sends your team back to node selection, Momento Flex offers a different division of work. You set capacity and replication bounds, and Momento selects and adjusts the topology within them. Cluster gives you direct instance, shard, replica, and zone choices when that precision matters. Both models include the same built-in autoscaling, and Momento manages cluster health, failover, rolling updates, and security patches for your dedicated Valkey capacity.

Keep client integration steady as topology changes

Memorystore’s cluster-enabled mode supports sharding and requires cluster-aware clients. Cluster-disabled mode uses one shard and ordinary clients. You can resize capacity within either mode, but you can’t switch modes in place. If your application is approaching a sharding transition, that client-mode decision deserves attention before growth forces it.

Momento gives your application access to dedicated, high-performance Valkey through a familiar standalone-mode client. Its managed gateway handles connections, TLS, authentication, and routing, and scales to millions of clients. Your clients don’t need to discover backend nodes or track topology changes as the cluster grows. That keeps the integration steady as you add application replicas and Momento manages the underlying topology.

Try Momento Cache

Momento Cache puts dedicated, high-performance Valkey behind a managed gateway that keeps client integration stable as your application grows. Choose Cluster for direct control over instance types, shards, and replicas, or Flex to set capacity and replication bounds while Momento selects the topology. Both include built-in autoscaling and fully managed cluster operations.

Talk to a Momento solution engineer to evaluate the capacity model and configuration that fit your workload.

Frequently asked questions

What uptime does each service commit to?

Memorystore and Momento each offer a 99.99% uptime SLA. (Memorystore SLA, Momento SLA)

Can an application outside Google Cloud connect?

Yes. Memorystore uses Private Service Connect, so an outside application needs supported networking to reach its private endpoint.

How much capacity can each service support?

Memorystore’s published aggregate capacity rounds to 28 TB. Momento is in the 50 TB+ range, giving a growing dataset more room within the service.