Facts read November 9, 2026
Cloudflare Workers KV vs Upstash Redis
Upstash Redis is Cuely's default counters and cache pick when your description doesn't favor either one: redis counters, sorted sets and expiring keys over HTTP, so it works from serverless and edge functions. Pick Cloudflare Workers KV if you care most about global low latency.
Side by side
| Fact | Cloudflare Workers KV | Upstash Redis |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A global, eventually consistent key-value store for Workers, built for many reads and few writes. | Serverless Redis over HTTP, billed per command or as a fixed monthly plan. |
| 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: 250 MB of data, 500K commands a month, 10 GB of bandwidth a month, 1 database, up to 10,000 commands per second. |
| 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. | Pay as you go: $0.20 per 100K commands; storage $0.25 per GB after the first 1 GB; bandwidth free up to 200 GB a month, then $0.03/GB. Fixed 250 MB: $10/month with no per-command billing. |
| 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 | Vote counts and live tallies; Leaderboards (sorted sets); Streaks and rate limits (keys that expire); Caching hot reads |
| 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 stops at 500K commands a month, which a viral day can use in hours; switch to pay as you go and set its budget cap before launch. The free plan allows 1 database. |
Where they differ
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide which one Cuely picks for each need.
| Need | Cloudflare Workers KV | Upstash Redis |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | +3 Atomic INCR and HINCRBY for votes, sorted sets for leaderboards, expiring keys for streaks, up to 10,000 commands a second on every plan. |
| global low latency | +3 Reads are served from Cloudflare's network close to every player. | +1 HTTP client works from edge runtimes, including Cloudflare Workers. |
| traffic comes in viral spikes | +1 Paid includes 10 million reads a month, then $0.50 per million. | +2 Pay as you go absorbs a spike at $0.20 per 100K commands, under a budget cap you set. |
| keep costs as low as possible | +1 Free covers 100,000 reads and 1,000 writes a day. | +2 Free covers 500K commands a month. |
| Next.js or React | 0 No particular strength here. | +1 Vercel's own Redis option: Vercel KV is no longer offered and existing stores moved to Upstash. |
Sources: Cloudflare Workers KV pricing (read November 9, 2026), Upstash Redis pricing (read November 9, 2026). No vendor pays for placement.