Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store and cache service by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The service improves the performance of web applications by retrieving information from managed in-memory caches, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ElastiCache supports three in-memory caching engines: Valkey, Memcached, and Redis.

As a web service running in the computing cloud, Amazon ElastiCache is designed to simplify the setup, operation, and scaling of Valkey, Memcached, and Redis deployments. Complex administration processes like patching software, backing up and restoring data sets and dynamically adding or removing capabilities are managed automatically. Scaling ElastiCache resources can be performed by a single API call.

Amazon ElastiCache was first released on August 22, 2011, supporting memcached. This was followed by support for reserved instances on April 5, 2012 and Redis on September 4, 2013.

As a managed database service with multiple supported engines, Amazon ElastiCache has a wide range of uses, including

Database limitations are often a bottleneck for application performance. By placing Amazon ElastiCache between an application and its database tier, database operations can be accelerated.

Using ElastiCache for database performance acceleration can significantly reduce the infrastructure needed to support the database. In many cases, the cost savings outweigh the cache costs. Expedia was able to use ElastiCache to reduce provisioned DynamoDB capacity by 90%, reducing total database cost by 6x.

Using the Redis engine, ElastiCache can rapidly process time-series data, quickly selecting newest or oldest records or events within range of a point-in-time.

Leaderboards are an effective way to show a user quickly where they currently stand within a gamified system. For systems with large numbers of gamers, calculating and publishing player ranks can be challenging. Using Amazon ElastiCache with the Redis engine can enable high-speed at scale for leaderboards.