Staxly

Temporal vs PocketBase

Durable execution platform for mission-critical workflows
vs. Open-source backend in a single Go binary

Temporal website ↗PocketBase (OSS) ↗

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
Temporal website ↗

PocketBase

Self-Hosted
MIT-licensed single binary. Run on any VPS / Docker / bare metal. No usage caps — only limited by your server.
$0 base (usage-based)
PocketBase (OSS) ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing oss on Temporal vs self-hosted on PocketBase.

MetricTemporalPocketBase
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.

PocketBase · 12 features

  • Access Rules — Record-level access rules (filter expressions) referencing @request and @collect…
  • Admin Dashboard — Built-in web UI for schema + data management.
  • Auth — Email+password, OAuth2 (Google, GitHub, Facebook, Apple, Discord, Microsoft, etc…
  • Backups — Built-in backup/restore with S3 upload option.
  • Built-in Mailer — SMTP integration for verification, password reset, magic link emails.
  • Collections — Schema-defined record types with fields, validations, and record/admin/auth acce…
  • Embedded JS Engine — JavaScript VM (goja) lets you write hooks in JS without recompiling.
  • Extend as Go Library — Embed PocketBase in a larger Go app, add custom routes and events.
  • File Storage — Local filesystem or S3-compatible storage with access rules.
  • Hooks — Server-side Go or JavaScript hooks that run on CRUD events (OnRecordBeforeCreate…
  • Migrations — JS/Go migration scripts applied on startup.
  • Realtime Subscriptions — SSE-based subscriptions to collection changes.

Developer interfaces

KindTemporalPocketBase
CLItemporal CLI—
SDKTemporal Go SDK, temporalio (Python), @temporalio (TypeScript), Temporal Java SDK, Temporal .NET SDK, Temporal PHP SDKGo API (extend as library), pocketbase (Dart), pocketbase (JS SDK)
REST—REST API
OTHERTemporal gRPC API, Temporal Web UIAdmin Dashboard, Realtime SSE
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Temporal and PocketBase are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.