Varnish Cache vs Memcached(2026)
Varnish Cache is better for teams that need extremely high throughput http caching. Memcached is the stronger choice if extremely fast. Varnish Cache is open-source (from $0) and Memcached is open-source (from $0).
Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.
Affiliate disclosure: Some “Visit” links on this page are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you sign up — at no extra cost to you. It does not affect our rankings or editorial coverage. Learn more.
Varnish Cache
Varnish Cache is a high-performance HTTP accelerator used by the world's busiest websites. It caches HTTP responses in memory, offloading backends and serving millions of requests per second.
Starting at $0
Visit Varnish CacheMemcached
Memcached is the battle-tested, open-source distributed memory caching system used by Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia for caching database query results and API responses at massive scale.
Starting at $0
Visit MemcachedHow Do Varnish Cache and Memcached Compare on Features?
| Feature | Varnish Cache | Memcached |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | open-source | open-source |
| Starting price | $0 | $0 |
| HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy | ✓ | — |
| VCL configuration language | ✓ | — |
| Edge Side Includes (ESI) | ✓ | — |
| Health checks | ✓ | — |
| Grace mode | ✓ | — |
| Hit-for-pass | ✓ | — |
| Varnish Enterprise | ✓ | — |
| In-memory key-value store | — | ✓ |
| Multi-threaded | — | ✓ |
| Simple protocol | — | ✓ |
| LRU eviction | — | ✓ |
| Consistent hashing | — | ✓ |
| SASL authentication | — | ✓ |
| Binary protocol | — | ✓ |
Varnish Cache Pros and Cons vs Memcached
Varnish Cache
Memcached
Should You Use Varnish Cache or Memcached?
Choose Varnish Cache if…
- •Extremely high throughput HTTP caching
- •Flexible VCL
- •Battle-tested at internet scale
Choose Memcached if…
- •Extremely fast
- •Simple and battle-tested
- •Multi-threaded (great CPU utilization)