# Valkey

Valkey is the cache and limiter store for SearXNG. It replaces Redis as the default in the official SearXNG deployment.

**Host:** Dankclaw — **Docs:** https://valkey.io

## Facts (from research)

| Item | Value |
|------|-------|
| Image | `valkey/valkey:9-alpine` |
| Port | 6379 (internal, on the SearXNG network) |
| Role | SearXNG limiter + result cache |

## Why Valkey

The official SearXNG docker-compose ships a `searxng-valkey` container. Valkey is the Redis fork under the Linux Foundation umbrella; the SearXNG project moved to it as the default cache.

## Configuration

The valkey unit is `searxng-valkey.container` (see [[SearXNG]] for the trio). It joins the searxng network and is reachable by the name `searxng-valkey` (container name) and the alias `valkey`:

```ini
[Container]
ContainerName=searxng-valkey
Network=searxng.network
NetworkAlias=valkey
Image=docker.io/valkey/valkey:9-alpine
Volume=/opt/searxng/valkey:/data
```

SearXNG connects to it via `settings.yml`:

```yaml
valkey:
  url: "valkey://searxng-valkey:6379/0"
```

It sets `WantedBy=default.target`. User linger is on, so it starts at boot.

## Volumes

| Container path | Host path (convention) |
|----------------|------------------------|
| `/data` | `/opt/searxng/valkey` |

## Gotchas

- The limiter relies on Valkey; without it SearXNG falls back to in-memory state and rate limiting is per-restart.
- Keep Valkey on the same podman network as SearXNG.

## See Also

- [[SearXNG]] — the consumer
- [[Dankclaw Stack]]