Temporal vs Upstash
Durable execution platform for mission-critical workflows
vs. Serverless Redis + Kafka + Vector + QStash — per-request pricing
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
Upstash
Free
Redis: 256 MB + 500k cmds/mo. Vector: 10k queries/mo. QStash: 500 msgs/day.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Redis: $0.2 per 100k cmds. Vector: $0.4/M queries. QStash: $1 per 100k.
$0 base (usage-based)
Fixed Plans
From $10/mo. 250MB-500GB Redis. $5/read region. 50GB bandwidth included.
$10/mo
Prod Pack
+$200/mo per DB. SLA + RBAC + encryption + SOC-2 + Prometheus + Datadog.
$200/mo
Enterprise
Custom. 100k+ cmd/sec, unlimited bandwidth, HIPAA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing oss on Temporal vs free on Upstash.
| Metric | Temporal | Upstash |
|---|---|---|
| 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.
Upstash · 12 features
- Cron (via QStash) — Scheduled HTTP callbacks on any interval.
- Edge-Ready — Native for CF Workers, Vercel Edge, Deno, Bun.
- Global Database — Multi-region Redis reads.
- HTTP REST APIs — Every product has REST — works from edge runtimes.
- QStash — HTTP-based message queue + cron scheduler for webhooks.
- QStash Webhooks — Outgoing webhook delivery with retries + DLQ.
- Read Regions — Add read replicas in any region ($5/mo each).
- @upstash/ratelimit — Redis-backed rate limiter lib.
- Upstash Redis — Serverless Redis with HTTP REST + RESP TCP.
- Upstash Search — Full-text + semantic search engine.
- Upstash Vector — Serverless vector DB with REST API. HNSW indexing.
- Upstash Workflow — Durable workflow runtime built on QStash.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Temporal | Upstash |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | temporal CLI | — |
| SDK | Temporal Go SDK, temporalio (Python), @temporalio (TypeScript), Temporal Java SDK, Temporal .NET SDK, Temporal PHP SDK | upstash-redis / vector (Python), @upstash/redis / vector / qstash |
| REST | — | QStash REST API, Upstash Redis REST API, Upstash Vector REST |
| OTHER | Temporal gRPC API, Temporal Web UI | RESP (TCP) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Temporal and Upstash are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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