Azure Managed Redis vs Cache for Redis: When to Switch
Two Redis products in the Azure portal. They look similar. They are very different. Here's the migration trigger list.
Azure now has two Redis offerings:
- Azure Cache for Redis (the original) — Basic, Standard, Premium, Enterprise, Enterprise Flash.
- Azure Managed Redis (AMR) — the newer Redis Inc.-built service, Memory-Optimized / Balanced / Compute-Optimized / Flash tiers.
For greenfield work in 2026 onward, AMR is the default choice. But you shouldn't migrate existing Cache for Redis deployments without a reason. Here are the triggers worth migrating for:
Migrate when…
- You need Redis 7.4+ features — AMR ships fresher Redis versions earlier.
- You hit Cache for Redis Premium clustering limits — AMR scales further per node.
- You want active geo-replication on smaller tiers — in legacy Redis, geo-rep was Enterprise-only and pricey.
- You're tired of "scaling = downtime" — AMR scaling is online; legacy required a swap.
Stay on Cache for Redis when…
- Workload is <5 GB and stable. Basic tier is hard to beat on cost.
- You depend on RedisGears or specific Enterprise modules whose AMR support you haven't validated.
- You're inside 12 months of an existing reservation.
Operational note
Both products use private endpoints the same way. The private DNS zone
differs: privatelink.redis.cache.windows.net for legacy,
privatelink.redis.azure.net for AMR. Don't reuse one zone for the
other — the FQDN your app sees is in different namespaces.