Facts read November 9, 2026
Cloudflare Workers KV vs Redis Cloud
Cloudflare Workers KV is Cuely's default counters and cache pick when your description doesn't favor either one: cheap global reads for data that changes rarely, such as today's question or yesterday's final results. Pick Redis Cloud if you care most about votes, leaderboards and streaks.
Side by side
| Fact | Cloudflare Workers KV | Redis Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A global, eventually consistent key-value store for Workers, built for many reads and few writes. | Managed Redis from Redis, sized by memory rather than billed per command. |
| Free plan | Workers Free: 100,000 reads, 1,000 writes, 1,000 deletes and 1,000 lists a day, 1 GB stored. Past a limit, operations of that type fail until 00:00 UTC. | Free: one 30 MB database on a shared cloud deployment, best-effort SLA. |
| Paid from | Workers Paid ($5/month minimum): 10M reads a month, then $0.50 per million; 1M writes, then $5.00 per million; 1 GB, then $0.50 per GB-month. | Essentials: from $0.007/hour, about $5/month (250 MB to 100 GB). |
| At 1,000 users | $0/month | $0/month |
| Open source | No | No |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Best for | Caching read-mostly data at the edge; Config and content that changes a few times a day | Teams that want Redis from the company that makes it; Steady traffic where a flat price beats per-command billing |
| Watch out | Writes to the same key are limited to 1 per second, and a change can take 60 seconds or more to show in other locations, so it can't count votes. | Free is a 30 MB database on shared infrastructure with a best-effort SLA. The pricing page doesn't state operations-per-second or connection limits; check the plan before a launch. |
Where they differ
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide which one Cuely picks for each need.
| Need | Cloudflare Workers KV | Redis Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| votes, scores, leaderboards or streaks (many writes to the same numbers) | −3 1 write per second to the same key, and changes take up to 60 seconds or more to show everywhere, so it can't hold a live tally. | +2 Full Redis: INCR, sorted sets and expiring keys. |
| global low latency | +3 Reads are served from Cloudflare's network close to every player. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| traffic comes in viral spikes | +1 Paid includes 10 million reads a month, then $0.50 per million. | −1 Plans are sized by memory and the page states no throughput limits, so headroom for a spike is unclear. |
| keep costs as low as possible | +1 Free covers 100,000 reads and 1,000 writes a day. | −1 Free is 30 MB; paid starts at about $5 a month. |
Sources: Cloudflare Workers KV pricing (read November 9, 2026), Redis Cloud pricing (read November 9, 2026). No vendor pays for placement.