Magento 2: What is difference between Cache Clean & Cache Flush?

Question

In Magento 2 we have 2 commands

php bin/magento cache:flush
php bin/magento cache:clean

What's the exact difference between them? I'm generally using cache:flush. I never used cache:clean. So, when to use which command & in which situation?

• Mukesh Prajapati: Please read Magento 2 Cache Overview And Solution with this post helpful to understand difference between Cache Clean & Cache Flush

Answer 1

To purge out-of-date items from the cache, you can clean or flush cache types:

• Cleaning a cache type deletes all items from enabled Magento cache types only. In other words, this option does not affect other processes or applications because it cleans only the cache that Magento uses.

  Disabled cache types are not cleaned.

• Flushing a cache type purges the cache storage, which might affect other processes applications that are using the same storage.

Flush cache types if you’ve already tried cleaning the cache and you’re still having issues that you cannot isolate.

Source: https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/config-guide/cli/config-cli-subcommands-cache.html#config-cli-subcommands-cache-clean

• Jaya chandra: Can I know which are the other processes applications which will use Magento cache storage.
• Bala Varadarajan: You can enable performance in Magento by configuring Configuring Redis for backend cache,Configuring Memcached for session caching and Configuring Varnish as a Full Page Cache (This is explained in detail in Magento 2 Cook Book by Ray Bogman). The other applications in sense if you have a single Redis or any other server running and configured with more than one Magento or any other applications. Running Flush will delete all directory + files but running clean will delete files alone in \Magento\var\cache dir.
• robsch: @BalaVaradarajan I'm afraid I don't get it. Does anyone do that? I wouldn't come up with the idea to share a cache with different applications or Magento instances. Sounds very special.

Answer 2

php bin/magento cache:clean

Cleaning a cache type deletes all items from enabled Magento cache types only. In other words, this option does not affect other processes or applications because it cleans only the cache that Magento uses.

Disabled cache types are not cleaned.

php bin/magento cache:flush

Flushing a cache type purges the cache storage, which might affect other processes applications that are using the same storage.

Reference: DevDocs Manage the cache

• Jackson: Thanks @Rafael. So which is best & when to use?
• Rafael Corrêa Gomes: Depends, but I prefer cache:clear
• Ricardo Martins: I've tried to create an empty file on var/cache and it was not deleted by any of these commands as you mentioned. But thanks for that anyway.
• Rafael Corrêa Gomes: @RicardoMartins it is because you need to create a file like var/cache/mage--test-martines
• Patrick van Efferen: This answer is the opposite of the chosen answer If I am correct

Answer 3

Quoting Fabrizio Branca for this one:

(...) Magento that comes with those two different actions in the first place (you'll also find two buttons on the cache management page).

While cache:clean deletes the cache storage by tags cache:flush will wipe out everything.

There are two major differences here:

• some things are stored into the cache without the proper tags. cache:clean will not delete those.
• other things might be using the same cache storage (this is not recommended, but sadly sometimes this is the case). Flushing the cache will result in everything being deleted. So if multiple Magento instances use the same cache storage or if you store your sessions in the same Redis database you're using for the cache (please don't! :) then they will also be gone.

Other resources:

• Technical explanation and details (From Magenteiro) (In Portuguese)
• Cache management (official docs)
• About the 10 cache types in Magento (from Mageplaza's blog)

Answer 4

php bin/magento cache:clean

Cleaning a cache type deletes all items from enabled Magento cache types only. In other words, this option does not affect other processes or applications because it cleans only the cache that Magento uses.

Disabled cache types are not cleaned.

php bin/magento cache:flush

Flushing a cache type purges the cache storage, which might affect other processes applications that are using the same storage.

Answer 5

Using bin/magento cache:clean you can specify(comma-separated) cache types you want to clean.

Supported types:

config, layout, block_html, collections, reflection, db_ddl, eav,
customer_notification, target_rule, full_page, config_integration,
config_integration_api, translate, config_webservice

• Ricardo Martins: You can do that with cache:flush as well. See devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/config-guide/cli/….

Answer 6

While cache:clean deletes the cache storage by tags cache:flush will wipe out everything.

There are two major differences here:

some things are stored into the cache without the proper tags. cache:clean will not delete those. other things might be using the same cache storage (this is not recommended, but sadly sometimes this is the case). Flushing the cache will result in everything being deleted. So if multiple Magento instances use the same cache storage or if you store your sessions in the same redis database you're using for the cache (please don't! :) then they will also be gone.

Source : https://github.com/netz98/n98-magerun/issues/588#issuecomment-112453280