Temporal vs Fly.io

Temporal

Fly.io

Temporal · 16 features

• Activities — Retryable units of work.
• Activity Retries — Declarative retry policies.
• Child Workflows — Nested workflow composition.
• Continue-As-New — Close + restart workflow to prune history.
• Nexus (cross-namespace) — Call workflows across namespaces/teams.
• Queries — Synchronous read of workflow state.
• Saga / Compensations — Rollback pattern via compensating activities.
• Schedules — Cron-like recurring workflows.
• Self-Host — Deploy cluster on your infra.
• Signals — Async messages into a running workflow.
• Timers — Durable sleeps — hours, days, months.
• Update — Synchronous RPC into workflow with validation.
• Visibility + Search Attrs — Query workflow state via Elasticsearch/native store.
• Web UI — Inspect workflow history, events, stack.
• Workflows — Durable, replayable, long-running functions.
• Workflow Versioning — Patch workflow code without breaking in-flight runs.

Fly.io · 14 features

• Auto Stop/Start — Machines auto-stop when idle, start on request (like scale-to-zero).
• Certs — Let's Encrypt + wildcard certs managed.
• Fly GPU — A100/L40S/A10 on-demand GPU machines.
• Fly Kubernetes (FKS) — Managed Kubernetes on Fly machines.
• Fly Machines — Firecracker microVMs. Start in <1s. Run any Docker image.
• Fly Postgres — Managed Postgres via Supabase partnership (2024). Also legacy self-run Postgres …
• fly-replay headers — Route request to another region at app level.
• Fly Volumes — Persistent SSD attached to a Machine. Encrypted at rest.
• Global Anycast — Single IP routes to the closest region automatically.
• LiteFS — Distributed SQLite with primary/replica across regions.
• Private Networks — 6PN WireGuard mesh. Connect machines across regions privately.
• Secrets — Encrypted env vars propagated to all regions.
• Tigris (partner) — S3-compatible storage for Fly apps. By partner.
• Upstash Redis (partner) — Managed Redis via Upstash.