JSON Was Killing Our Redis Memory. Switching Serialization Made It 7× Smaller.

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/json-was-killing-our-redis-memory-switching-serialization-made-it-7-smaller . Cut Redis memory usage by 7× by ditching JSON for Pydantic models. Learn how a custom binary format reduced storage, costs, and overhead at scale. Check more stories related to programming at: https://hackernoon.com/c/programming . You can also check exclusive content about #python , #pydantic , #object-serialization , #redis-memory , #pybyntic , #protobuf , #messagepack , #hackernoon-top-story , and more. This story was written by: @yankhachko . Learn more about this writer by checking @yankhachko's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com . Redis was running a large production service with about **10 million monthly active users**. Every record in Redis was a **JSON-serialized Pydantic model** It looked clean and convenient – until it started to hurt. At scale, JSON stops being a harmless convenience and becomes a silent tax on memory.