Caching improves application performance by storing frequently accessed data in memory, reducing database queries and external API calls for faster response times. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve implemented caching strategies in high-traffic Node.js applications throughout my 12 years of backend development since 2014. The most effective approach combines in-memory caching for simple use cases with Redis for distributed caching across multiple servers. This method provides flexible cache invalidation, TTL management, and scalability from single-server to distributed architectures without application code changes.