No, Redis Enterprise is not free. It's a commercial product offered by Redis Labs that provides an enhanced version of open-source Redis with additional features like automated scaling, higher availability, and data persistence among others.
While the open-source Redis software is free to use, Redis Enterprise comes with a cost because of its added functionality and support. Pricing details for Redis Enterprise can be found on the Redis Labs' official website.
However, Redis Labs does offer a free tier of their managed database service called "Redis Cloud", which could be suitable for small projects or development/testing scenarios. It has some limitations compared to the enterprise version.
It's important to note that while Redis Enterprise isn't free, it offers advantages such as:
To use Redis for free, you would typically install the open-source version yourself using commands like these on a Unix-based system:
$ wget http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz $ tar xvzf redis-stable.tar.gz $ cd redis-stable $ make
Then, you would run Redis using the resulting executable:
$ src/redis-server
Remember that using the open-source version requires more effort from you in terms of setup, maintenance, and manually handling issues like scaling and high availability.
Dragonfly is fully compatible with the Redis ecosystem and requires no code changes to implement.