Inngest is the closest managed match for most teams leaving Trigger.dev, with a free plan that includes 50,000 executions a month and a Pro plan from $99 a month. Temporal fits long running, failure sensitive workflows, and Hatchet fits teams that want generous free usage, with 1 million runs and 1 million events a month included. BullMQ, Sidekiq, and Celery are open source libraries you run yourself, so the software costs little or nothing, while Redis, workers, and monitoring become your responsibility.
We compared 7 options for trigger.dev alternatives. Each profile below lists the price, free plan, pros and cons as published by the company.
On this page
Trigger.dev alternatives: comparison table
Swipe the table sideways on a phone to see every column.
| # | Name | Best for | Starting price | Free plan / trial | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inngest | Managed durable functions in your own app | $99 per month | Yes | Visit |
| 2 | Temporal | Long running workflows that must survive failures | $50 per million actions | Free trial (90 days) | Visit |
| 3 | BullMQ | Node.js queues on Redis you control yourself | quote only | Yes | Visit |
| 4 | Sidekiq | Ruby and Rails background jobs at scale | quote only | Yes | Visit |
| 5 | Celery | Python task queues with Django or Flask | $0 per month | Yes | Visit |
| 6 | Hatchet | High volume task runs with generous free usage | $0 per month | Yes | Visit |
| 7 | Windmill | Scripts, flows, and internal apps in one place | $120 per month | Yes | Visit |
The 7 best trigger.dev alternatives, in detail
Inngest
Best for: Managed durable functions in your own app
Inngest lets developers write functions in TypeScript or Python and run them as durable, event driven workflows. You define steps inside a normal function, and Inngest keeps the state, retries failed steps, and resumes after waits that can last days. That model maps closely to Trigger.dev, where jobs are code first and the platform handles scheduling, retries, and observability.
- The local dev server gives a fast way to test functions before they reach production.
- The pricing page lists a free plan with 50,000 executions a month, 500,000 events a month, 5 concurrent steps, 5 seats, and 24 hour trace history, wit
- Pro starts at $99 a month and includes 1,000,000 executions, 5,000,000 events, 100 concurrent steps, 15 seats, 20 workers, and 7 day trace history.
- Business starts at $499 a month with 10,000,000 executions and 500 concurrent steps.
Pros
- Durable steps with automatic retries and waits
- runs in your own app with no worker fleet to manage
Cons
- Each step counts as an execution, so multi-step functions use the allowance fast
- HIPAA BAA is an add-on on Pro and Business plans
Temporal
Best for: Long running workflows that must survive failures
Temporal is a durable execution platform for workflows that run for minutes, days, or months. A workflow keeps its state at every step, so a crash, a deploy, or a worker restart does not lose progress. It retries activities with backoff, supports timers, signals, queries, and child workflows, and gives teams a full event history for each run.
- That depth makes it a strong choice for order processing, money movement, and onboarding flows, where a lost step has real cost.
- Temporal Cloud removes the need to operate the cluster.
- Temporal Cloud starts at $50 per million actions, with no base monthly fee on the Developer support tier, and volume discounts bring the rate down to
- New accounts get $150 in credits for 90 days.
Pros
- Workflow state survives crashes and deploys
- SDKs in Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, .NET, PHP, Ruby, and Rust
Cons
- Usage based billing is hard to forecast before you measure actions
- the workflow and activity model takes time to learn
BullMQ
Best for: Node.js queues on Redis you control yourself
BullMQ is a job queue library for Node.js that stores jobs in Redis and processes them with workers you run. It supports delayed jobs, repeatable jobs on cron patterns, parent child flows, priorities, rate limiting, and dead letter handling, which covers most everyday background work such as sending email, generating reports, and processing uploads. Its homepage reports 9.7 million weekly downloads and an MIT licence with no limits on workers or concurrency in the core.
- The core library is free, and the vendor sells a Pro licence for groups, batches, observables, and professional support, with pricing quoted by the ve
- That means your main cost is infrastructure: Redis hosting, worker compute, and whatever dashboard or alerting you add.
- BullMQ does not keep durable workflow state across steps in the way Temporal or Inngest do, so a job that fails midway restarts from the start unless
- Pick BullMQ when you want full control, low software cost, and a queue that fits a stack you already operate.
Pros
- MIT licensed core with no per job charge
- fast Redis backed queues with delays, repeats, flows, and rate limits
Cons
- You run Redis, workers, and monitoring yourself
- groups, batches, and observables need a Pro licence
Sidekiq
Best for: Ruby and Rails background jobs at scale
Sidekiq is the standard background job system for Ruby on Rails. Jobs are plain Ruby classes pushed to Redis, and multithreaded workers pull them off the queue and run them. The open source version covers the basics well, including retries, scheduled jobs, and a web dashboard.
- It is a natural alternative for a Rails team that wants to move background work out of Trigger.dev and into the same language and framework as the res
- The open source core is free.
- Sidekiq Pro and Sidekiq Enterprise add reliability features such as super fetch, batches, unique jobs, rate limiting, periodic jobs, and rolling resta
- Enterprise licensing is based on the number of worker threads in production, and development and staging environments are free and unlimited.
Pros
- Proven in Rails production for more than a decade
- multithreaded workers process many jobs per process
Cons
- Ruby only, so it does not fit other stacks
- batches, scheduling, and rate limiting need commercial licences
Celery
Best for: Python task queues with Django or Flask
Celery is an open source distributed task queue for Python, built on message passing through a broker such as RabbitMQ or Redis. Tasks run concurrently on worker nodes, and the library supports periodic tasks, routing, retries, chords, groups, and chains for multi step work. It has been used in production for many years, including in large Python shops, and it fits naturally with Django and Flask apps that already run Python everywhere.
- The current stable version is 5.7, and the project is licensed under the BSD licence, so there is no licence fee for the software itself.
- The cost of Celery is the infrastructure around it.
- You choose and run a broker, you run and scale workers, and you add a result backend and monitoring, often with Flower or your own metrics.
- That freedom is also the drawback: there is no vendor dashboard, no managed retries dashboard, and no hosted tier to fall back on when a queue backs u
Pros
- Mature Python library with broad broker support
- integrates well with Django, Flask, and FastAPI
Cons
- No hosted option or built in dashboard in the core
- you operate the broker, workers, and result backend
Hatchet
Best for: High volume task runs with generous free usage
Hatchet is an open source orchestration engine for background tasks, queues, and durable workflows, with SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Go, and Ruby. It runs on Postgres, supports DAGs, cron jobs, scheduled runs, webhooks, and durable streams, and offers a cloud hosted option alongside self hosting. The design targets high throughput work such as AI agent steps, data pipelines, and event driven jobs, with workers that connect to the engine and pull tasks.
- Hatchet Cloud starts at $0 a month and includes 1 million task runs and 1 million events each month, with 100 workers, 10 tenants, and 50 users includ
- Usage past those amounts costs $30 per million runs and $5 per million events, and extra users cost $10 each.
- The free tier without a card caps at 2,000 runs a day and 1 day of retention, and failed runs are billed while retries are not, so a flaky task can st
- Custom plans add volume discounts, dedicated capacity, single sign on, role based access, audit logs, and HIPAA support.
Pros
- 1 million runs and 1 million events a month included
- retries are not billed, only failed runs are
Cons
- Free tier caps at 2,000 runs a day and 1 day retention
- a younger platform with a smaller ecosystem than Temporal
Windmill
Best for: Scripts, flows, and internal apps in one place
Windmill is a developer platform that turns scripts in Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL, and other languages into scheduled jobs, APIs, workflows, and internal apps. A script becomes a job with a schedule, a flow chains scripts together with branches and loops, and an app gives non technical staff a form to run a job safely. That combination suits teams that want background jobs plus the internal tools around them, such as admin panels, report runners, and data syncs, without building a separate app for each one.
- It runs as a cloud service or as a self hosted instance on Docker or Kubernetes.
- The Community Edition is free to self host with unlimited executions, up to 50 users, 3 workspaces, 10 users with single sign on, and 10 GiB of worksp
- Enterprise starts from $120 a month, with builders at $20 a month each, non builders at $10 a month each, and standard workers at $50 a month each wit
- The pricing page example quotes $170 a month for 1 builder with 3 compute units, so treat $120 as a floor rather than a finished quote.
Pros
- Turns scripts into APIs, jobs, flows, and apps
- self hosted Community Edition has unlimited executions
Cons
- Enterprise pricing mixes seats and compute units, so real quotes run above the headline
- Community Edition caps at 50 users and 3 workspaces
How we chose
We compared tools that do the same core job as Trigger.dev: run background work reliably, with retries, scheduling, and visibility into runs. We read each vendor pricing page and docs on 12 November 2026, and we used only the prices and limits those pages publish. We left out tools with no real homepage or no maintained docs. We did not run hands on tests, and we did not rank tools by speed, because those numbers depend on workload, broker, and worker size. The order in this guide puts the closest managed matches first, then the self hosted libraries, then the broader platform. Your stack, your volume, and your tolerance for operating infrastructure should decide the final pick, not the order here.
What to check before you buy
Check language support first, because a queue in the wrong language adds a runtime you must maintain. Check how the vendor counts billable work, which may be executions, steps, actions, runs, or events, and map your real job shape onto that unit before you trust a headline price. Check retention, concurrency limits, and run length caps on the plan you would actually use, not the top plan. Check what happens at the limit: some plans pause work, some drop tasks, and some keep billing. Check the broker or datastore you must run, the dashboard and alerting you get, and the exit path, including if you can export history and self host the same code.
| Team size and budget | Best starting pick | Monthly cost to expect | | Solo developer, $0 budget | Celery, BullMQ, or Hatchet free tier | $0 for software, plus hosting for the self hosted picks | | Small team, under $150 a month | Inngest Pro or Hatchet usage based | $99 a month for Inngest Pro, or usage based billing on Hatchet past 1 million runs | | Growing team, $150 to $600 a month | Temporal Cloud or Windmill Enterprise | $50 per million actions on Temporal, from $120 a month on Windmill Enterprise | | Large team, over $600 a month | Temporal Business or Inngest Business | From $500 a month for Temporal Business support, from $499 a month for Inngest Business |
Ask the vendor for a written quote when the price depends on threads, seats, or volume, and keep the quote next to the pricing page so you can spot changes at renewal. Test the failure path in staging: kill a worker mid job, restart the queue, and watch whether the job resumes, retries, or disappears. That one test tells you more than a feature table.
Frequently asked questions
What is the closest Trigger.dev alternative?
Inngest is the closest match for most teams, because it is a managed, code first platform for durable functions with steps, retries, waits, and scheduling. Its free plan includes 50,000 executions a month, and Pro starts at $99 a month with 1,000,000 executions. Teams that need long running workflows with strong durability guarantees should look at Temporal instead, and Node.js teams that want full control should look at BullMQ.
Do I need a managed platform, or is a library enough?
A library is enough when your team already runs Redis or RabbitMQ, can operate workers, and has simple jobs that restart cleanly. A managed platform is worth the cost when jobs must survive crashes, run for days, or need a dashboard and audit history without extra work. Compare the hours your team spends on queue operations with the monthly price of a managed plan.
Which Trigger.dev alternative is free?
Celery, BullMQ, Sidekiq, and Hatchet all have a free starting point. Celery, BullMQ, and Sidekiq are open source libraries with no licence fee, though you still pay for the broker, workers, and hosting. Hatchet Cloud starts at $0 a month with 1 million runs and 1 million events included. Inngest and Windmill also have free plans, while Temporal offers $150 in credits for 90 days rather than a permanent free plan.
How do I choose between Inngest and Temporal?
Choose Inngest when your work is event driven, your team writes TypeScript or Python, and you want a managed service with a simple free plan. Choose Temporal when workflows run for a long time, must survive failures without losing state, and need signals, queries, and child workflows. Temporal bills per action, while Inngest bills per execution and counts each step.
Can I migrate from Trigger.dev without rewriting everything?
You will rewrite the job definitions, because each tool has its own SDK and job shape, but the business logic inside each job usually moves with small changes. Start by listing every job, its schedule, its retries, and its inputs, then rebuild one low risk job on the new tool and run both side by side. Keep the old system until the new one has handled real failures.
What is the main cost driver for background job tools?
The billing unit is the main cost driver, and it differs by tool, so compare units, not headline prices. Inngest counts executions and steps, Temporal counts actions, Hatchet counts runs and events, and Windmill counts seats and compute units. A job with many steps costs more on a per step model, while a job with many small operations costs more on a per action model.
Sources
- https://www.inngest.com/
- https://www.inngest.com/pricing
- https://temporal.io/
- https://temporal.io/pricing
- https://bullmq.io/
- https://sidekiq.org/
- https://sidekiq.org/wiki/Commercial-FAQ
- https://celeryproject.org/
- https://hatchet.run/
- https://hatchet.run/pricing
- https://www.windmill.dev/
- https://www.windmill.dev/pricing
Prices and features were read on each company’s own website in November 2026. They change often, so confirm the current offer on the official site before you sign up or buy.