TQCache is a high-performance, persistent session storage server. It provides a Memcached-compatible interface with disk-based persistence, making it ideal for session storage that survives restarts.
Blog post: https://www.tqdev.com/2026-tqcache-memcache-redis-alternative
- Session Storage: Ideal for PHP's native
memcachedsession handler - Persistent Storage: Data stored on disk, survives server restarts
- Efficient Storage: About 25-33% waste space on disk on average
- Faster than Redis: More than 50% faster than Redis in typical cases
- Memcached Compatible: Supports all Memcached commands, text and binary
- TTL Enforcement: Maximum TTL defaults to 24 hours (set to 0 to disable)
- No Eviction: No LRU eviction support; Use max-ttl to limit diskspace usage
- Go 1.21 or later
go install github.com/mevdschee/tqcache/cmd/tqcache@latestOr build from source:
git clone https://github.com/mevdschee/tqcache.git
cd tqcache
go build -o tqcache ./cmd/tqcachetqcache [options]| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
-config |
Path to config file (overrides flags) | |
-listen |
:11211 |
Address to listen on ([address]:port) |
-data-dir |
data |
Directory for persistent data files |
-shards |
16 |
Number of shards for parallel processing |
-default-ttl |
0 |
Default TTL for keys (0 = no expiry) |
-max-ttl |
24h |
Maximum TTL cap for any key (0 = unlimited) |
-sync-mode |
periodic |
Sync mode: none, periodic, always |
-sync-interval |
1s |
Interval between fsync calls (when periodic) |
Fixed limits: Max key size is 1KB. Max value size is 64MB.
Configure PHP to use TQCache as the session handler:
session.save_handler = memcached
session.save_path = "localhost:11211"NB: Set "max-ttl = 24h" to prevent disk space exhaustion.
TQCache vs Redis vs Memcached
Benchmarks were run on a local development environment (Linux, Loopback). 100,000 keys were used for the benchmark, each with a size of 10KB.
- Write (SET): +49% faster than Redis (~92k RPS vs ~62k RPS) when writing with Periodic Sync.
- Read (GET): +64% faster than Redis (~176k RPS vs ~107k RPS) when reading.
- Memory: reserves ~17x less memory than Redis (~70MB vs ~1207MB), uses OS disk cache.
- CPU: uses ~4x more CPU than Redis (~4 vs ~1 core) as Redis is single threaded.
| Reference | SET (RPS) | GET (RPS) | Memory (MB) | CPU Usage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memcached (Memory) | ~126k | ~275k | ~1073MB | ~2.5 core |
| Redis (Periodic) | ~62k | ~107k | ~1207MB | ~1 core |
| TQCache (Periodic) | ~92k | ~176k | ~70MB | ~4 core |
NB: The maximum amount of cores used can be calculated as: shards / 4
go test ./pkg/tqcache/...TQCache stores session data on disk in a fixed-size record formats and holds several memory data structures to speed up access. It assumes SSD performance with good random I/O and enough free memory to let the OS keep the disk blocks in the cache. It does not use append-only files.
See PROJECT_BRIEF.md for detailed architecture.