Temporal vs Paddle
Durable execution platform for mission-critical workflows
vs. Merchant of Record for SaaS — global tax, billing, checkout in one
Pricing tiers
Temporal
Self-Hosted (OSS)
Free forever. MIT license. Run the Temporal cluster yourself on K8s/Docker.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud (usage-based)
Temporal Cloud. Pay per action ($25 per 1M actions base). Active user + storage also billed.
$0 base (usage-based)
Business Plan
Starts ~$100/mo commit. Multi-region, SSO, priority support.
Custom
Enterprise
Custom. HIPAA, PCI, dedicated clusters, enterprise SLA.
Custom
Paddle
Pay-as-you-go
5% + 50¢ per Checkout transaction. No monthly fee. All-inclusive (tax, fraud, support).
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom rates for high-volume. Dedicated success. Custom migration + implementation.
Custom
Invoicing (<$10 products)
Custom pricing for invoicing / products under $10.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing oss on Temporal vs payg on Paddle.
| Metric | Temporal | Paddle |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
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.
Paddle · 12 features
- Affiliates (Rewardful partnership) — Affiliate tracking (via partner).
- Customer Portal — Self-service subscription management.
- Fraud Protection — ML + human review. Paddle absorbs chargebacks.
- Global Tax Compliance — Automatic VAT/GST/sales tax calc + remittance + filing.
- One-time Sales — Perpetual license sales, single purchases.
- Paddle Checkout — Hosted or overlay checkout. Localized + fraud-protected.
- Paddle Retain — Revenue recovery + cancel flows (acquired Retain).
- ProfitWell Analytics — Included subscription analytics (acquired ProfitWell).
- Self-Serve Invoices — B2B invoicing with custom POs.
- Smart Dunning — Retry logic + email sequences for failed payments.
- Subscriptions — Full lifecycle: trials, changes, cancellations, recovery.
- Webhooks — Standard resource events with HMAC signing.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Temporal | Paddle |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | temporal CLI | — |
| SDK | Temporal Go SDK, temporalio (Python), @temporalio (TypeScript), Temporal Java SDK, Temporal .NET SDK, Temporal PHP SDK | Paddle.js, @paddle/paddle-node-sdk, paddle-python |
| REST | — | Paddle Billing API |
| OTHER | Temporal gRPC API, Temporal Web UI | Paddle Checkout, Paddle Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Temporal and Paddle may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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