Removed: Redis as a required dependency. Sessions, caching, locks and WebSocket traffic moved onto the PostgreSQL database the product already required.
Outcome: one fewer piece to manage, and for software customers install themselves, one fewer stateful service to deploy, back up and patch. The cost was published too: latency on their remote-access provider rose slightly, and WebSockets lost performance to added disk usage.
authentik, a self-hosted identity provider, removed Redis as a required dependency in its 2025.10 release, moving sessions, caching, locks and WebSocket traffic onto the PostgreSQL database the product already required. The work was spread over four releases, starting in 2024.6, because, as the team put it, “…something that major should not be rushed”. Their reason is the one the manifesto argues for: “Moving off Redis simplified our architecture; one fewer piece to manage” — and for software customers install themselves, one fewer stateful service to deploy, back up and patch. They also published what it cost: latency on their remote-access provider rose slightly, and WebSockets lost performance to added disk usage, with a link to a project that went the other way for that reason.
Source: authentik, We removed Redis (13 November 2025)