10 Best Redis Monitoring Tools for 2026

The best Redis monitoring tools in 2026 are Redis Insight for hands-on inspection, Prometheus with redis_exporter and Grafana for a self-hosted stack, Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace and Elastic for teams already on those platforms, Percona PMM and Zabbix as free open-source options, Amazon CloudWatch for ElastiCache, and Splunk AppDynamics. Almost all of them read the same source: Redis’s own INFO command, plus SLOWLOG and LATENCY. This guide compares the ten tools and shows which of those metrics to alert on, with every fact checked against redis.io and the vendors’ documentation in October 2026.

Key takeaways

• Memory against maxmemory, evictions, cache hit ratio, connected and blocked clients, and slow commands cover most Redis incidents.
• With the default noeviction policy a full Redis does not evict anything: it refuses writes with an error. A zero evicted_keys count is not proof that memory is fine.
• Redis runs commands on one main thread, so one slow command delays every client. Turn on the latency monitor and keep an eye on the slow log.

Redis monitoring tools compared at a glance

Redis performance monitoring: what to watch

Redis performance monitoring comes down to a small set of numbers that Redis already reports, and every tool above is a different way to collect, chart and alert on them. Know these first and the tool choice gets easier. Most come from INFO (run INFO memory, INFO stats or INFO clients for one section), and the rest from the slow log and the latency monitor.

How to check Redis performance with built-in commands

You can read all of this without installing anything. redis-cli ships with Redis:

redis-cli INFO memory                          # used_memory, maxmemory, fragmentation
redis-cli INFO stats                           # evicted_keys, keyspace_hits/misses, ops per second
redis-cli SLOWLOG GET 10                       # the 10 most recent slow commands
redis-cli CONFIG SET latency-monitor-threshold 100
redis-cli LATENCY DOCTOR                       # plain-English latency report
redis-cli --latency                            # client-side round-trip latency, live
redis-cli --stat                               # rolling stats, one line per interval
redis-cli --bigkeys                            # largest keys per type (uses SCAN)
redis-cli --memkeys                            # keys using the most memory (uses SCAN)

A few defaults worth knowing, from the Redis documentation and the stock redis.conf:

• Slow log: slowlog-log-slower-than is 10000 microseconds (10 ms) and slowlog-max-len is 128 entries. The time measured is command execution only, not network I/O, because execution is the stage where the server cannot serve anyone else.
• Latency monitor: off by default (latency-monitor-threshold 0). The threshold is in milliseconds; set it to the worst latency your application can accept, and Redis records every event that takes longer.
• Eviction policy: maxmemory-policy defaults to noeviction. The other policies are allkeys-lru, allkeys-lfu, allkeys-random, volatile-lru, volatile-lfu, volatile-random and volatile-ttl, and Redis 8.6 added allkeys-lrm and volatile-lrm (least recently modified). The volatile-* policies behave like noeviction when no key has a TTL. Under noeviction, the rejected_calls counts in INFO commandstats show which commands the memory limit is stopping.

Be careful with MONITOR. It streams every command the server processes, which is useful for debugging, but Redis’s own benchmark shows a single MONITOR client cutting throughput by more than 50%. Use it for seconds, not as monitoring.

The 10 best Redis monitoring tools in 2026

1. Redis Insight

Redis Insight is the official GUI from Redis, and the vendor calls it “100% free”. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux desktops, as a Docker image, inside the Redis Cloud console, and as a VS Code extension. For monitoring work, three parts matter: the Profiler, which shows every command sent to Redis in real time; the Slow Log view of SLOWLOG entries; and database analysis, which breaks memory down by data type and key expiry (it analyses up to 10,000 keys and extrapolates beyond that). It is licensed under SSPL (redis.io/docs, October 2026).

Use it to investigate a problem on one database. For history and alerts across many instances, pair it with one of the time-series tools below.

2. Prometheus, redis_exporter and Grafana

The open-source route is Prometheus scraping redis_exporter, with Grafana for dashboards and Prometheus or Grafana alerting on top. redis_exporter (MIT licence) exports the INFO metrics for Valkey 7.x to 9.x and Redis, plus optional per-key values and sizes for key patterns you list. Its README warns that matching a very large number of keys with --check-keys can slow the exporter down until scrapes fail, so keep patterns narrow. Version 1.95.0 shipped on 21 October 2026 (github.com/oliver006/redis_exporter, October 2026).

Redis also maintains a Redis data source plugin for Grafana that queries a database directly, though its last release, 2.2.0, dates from July 2023 (grafana.com plugin page, October 2026). If you already run Prometheus for other services, this stack costs nothing extra.

3. Datadog

Datadog’s Redis check, redisdb, ships inside the Datadog Agent, so there is nothing extra to install on the Redis host. It collects performance, memory usage, blocked clients, replica connections, persistence, and expired and evicted keys, plus latency metrics such as redis.info.latency_ms. Redis log collection is available but off by default, and traces of Redis calls come from instrumenting the application with Datadog APM (docs.datadoghq.com, Redis integration, October 2026).

It fits teams that already send infrastructure and application data to Datadog and want Redis on the same dashboards.

4. New Relic

New Relic monitors Redis through its on-host integration, nri-redis, installed next to the infrastructure agent on Linux or Windows, with separate guides for Kubernetes and Amazon ECS. It reports memory, CPU, client connections, command throughput, persistence and replication, the lengths of specific keys you list, and Redis configuration from CONFIG GET (with requirepass excluded) (docs.newrelic.com, Redis integration, October 2026).

5. Dynatrace

Dynatrace combines two data sources. The Redis extension from the Dynatrace Hub collects server metrics and events, including response time, memory fragmentation, cache hit ratio and connections. OneAgent adds end-to-end tracing down to the single Redis command for applications using the Java Lettuce and Redis clients, Node.js ioredis and redis, or PHP Redis (dynatrace.com/hub, Redis, October 2026). That tracing is the reason to choose it: you see which request in which service issued the slow command.

6. Elastic (Elasticsearch and Kibana)

Elastic’s Redis integration collects five datasets: Redis logs, the slow log, server statistics from INFO, details for keys matching patterns you configure, and keyspace statistics (elastic.co/docs, Redis integration, October 2026). It suits teams already searching logs in Kibana, because slow log entries land next to application logs from the same minute.

7. Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM)

PMM is Percona’s open-source database monitoring platform. Version 3.5.0, released on 19 November 2025, added native Valkey and Redis monitoring with ten dedicated dashboards covering health, client connections, cluster topology and replication, and command latency (docs.percona.com, October 2026). Before that release, monitoring Redis in PMM meant adding an external exporter by hand.

8. Zabbix

Zabbix provides the “Redis by Zabbix agent 2” template, which needs Zabbix 7.4 or later and an agent 2 build with the Redis plugin, and no external scripts. It reads INFO sections, tracks the slow log entry rate, and ships triggers for a service that is down, rejected connections, failed saves and high memory use (zabbix.com/integrations/redis, October 2026).

9. Amazon CloudWatch for ElastiCache

On ElastiCache for Valkey or Redis OSS, CloudWatch already holds the metrics. AWS recommends alarms on CPUUtilization or EngineCPUUtilization, SwapUsage against FreeableMemory, Evictions, CurrConnections, ReplicationLag and TrafficManagementActive, and for Valkey it reports SuccessfulReadRequestLatency and SuccessfulWriteRequestLatency. One detail catches people out: because the engine is single-threaded, AWS suggests a CPU alarm at 90% divided by the number of cores, so 45% on a two-core node (docs.aws.amazon.com, ElastiCache “Which Metrics Should I Monitor?”, October 2026).

10. Splunk AppDynamics

AppDynamics, now Splunk AppDynamics after Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk, monitors Redis servers through a Redis monitoring extension for its Machine Agent. The extension reads INFO and counts new slow log entries, and shows the results in the Metric Browser. Check its status before relying on it: the listing shows version 3.0.1, last updated in January 2021, maintained and supported by customers under an open-source model (developer.cisco.com Code Exchange, October 2026).

How to choose a Redis monitoring tool

Start from what you already run. Redis exposes the same metrics to every tool, so the deciding factors are where your other dashboards and alerts live and who will answer the page. A team on Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace or Elastic should switch on that platform’s Redis integration before buying anything new. A team with no platform gets the most for free from Prometheus with redis_exporter, or from PMM if it also runs other databases.

Then decide whether you need application traces. Server metrics tell you that Redis got slow; only an APM agent in your application tells you which endpoint sent the KEYS * that blocked it. If that question comes up often, weight Dynatrace, Datadog APM or New Relic APM higher. Our observability tools roundup and the application performance monitoring guide compare those platforms more broadly.

Last, keep Redis Insight installed whatever you choose. When an alert fires, a profiler and a memory breakdown on the live database answer questions dashboards cannot.

Where LoadFocus fits

LoadFocus does not connect to Redis or read its metrics, so it is not a Redis monitoring tool. It covers the two jobs around it. A cloud load test from 25+ regions drives real traffic through the application that uses Redis, so you can watch evicted_keys, hit ratio and the slow log in the tools above while load rises, and find the user count where they turn. Cache behaviour under load is easy to get wrong in a test; our article on cache invalidation in performance testing explains why a warm cache flatters results, and finding memory leaks with load tests covers the memory side.

In production, API monitoring checks the endpoints that depend on Redis on a schedule, asserting on status code, body, headers and response time, so a cache problem shows up as a slow or failing API before customers report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I monitor Redis?

Run INFO for memory, stats and client counts, SLOWLOG GET for slow commands and LATENCY DOCTOR for latency spikes. For continuous monitoring, collect the same numbers into a time-series tool such as Prometheus with redis_exporter, Datadog, New Relic or CloudWatch on ElastiCache, and alert on memory against maxmemory, evictions, rejected connections and slow commands.

How do I monitor Redis latency?

Use redis-cli --latency or --latency-history to measure round-trip time from a client. On the server, enable the latency monitor with CONFIG SET latency-monitor-threshold <ms> and read LATENCY LATEST or LATENCY DOCTOR, and check the slow log for commands that ran longer than slowlog-log-slower-than.

How do I stop the Redis MONITOR command?

In redis-cli, press Ctrl-C. Over a raw connection such as telnet, send QUIT, or RESET on Redis 6.2 and later. Stop it quickly on busy servers, because a single MONITOR client can cut throughput by more than half.

What is a good Redis cache hit ratio?

There is no universal number. Calculate it as keyspace_hits / (keyspace_hits + keyspace_misses) x 100 and compare it with what your access pattern should give. Redis’s own example: if a hot subset of data should serve about 75% of requests, expect a hit ratio near 75%. If it is lower, check evicted_keys and expired_keys to see whether keys leave the cache too early.

What is Redis client tracking?

Client tracking, the CLIENT TRACKING command added in Redis 6.0, supports client-side caching. Redis remembers which keys a connection read and sends it an invalidation message when one of them changes, so the client can keep a local copy without serving stale data. It is a caching feature, not a monitoring one.

Is Redis Insight free?

Yes. Redis describes Redis Insight as 100% free on desktop and in the Redis Cloud console, and it also runs from Docker and as a VS Code extension. Its source is published under the SSPL licence.

Sources

Every page below was read on 23 October 2026. Monitoring vendors are named as plain text, not linked.

• Redis documentation: INFO, SLOWLOG, latency monitoring, key eviction, MONITOR, CLIENT TRACKING, redis-cli, Redis Insight and the stock redis.conf.
• Amazon ElastiCache: Which Metrics Should I Monitor?
• redis_exporter: github.com/oliver006/redis_exporter (README and releases). Grafana: grafana.com/grafana/plugins/redis-datasource.
• Datadog: docs.datadoghq.com/integrations/redisdb. New Relic: docs.newrelic.com, Redis integration. Dynatrace: dynatrace.com/hub/detail/redis.
• Elastic: elastic.co/docs/reference/integrations/redis. Percona: docs.percona.com, PMM 3 reference and the PMM 3.5.0 release announcement. Zabbix: zabbix.com/integrations/redis.
• Splunk AppDynamics: developer.cisco.com Code Exchange, Appdynamics/redis-monitoring-extension, and splunk.com, “AppDynamics joins Splunk”.
• LoadFocus: loadfocus.com/index.md, load testing and API monitoring.

Related reading

• Top 5 APM Tools for 2026
• 16 Best Infrastructure Monitoring Tools Of 2026
• Best Server Monitoring Software for 2026