# Amazon SQS vs Hatchet

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-sqs-vs-hatchet/

Every value below is read from Amazon SQS's and Hatchet's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon SQS | Hatchet |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month. | $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month. |
| Pricing model | Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate. | Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$N/mo + usage" at $10 per million task runs, with the plan fee buying users, tenants, retention and throughput rather than volume. Self-hosting is offered with support on the enterprise tier. |
| Regions | 34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table. | 3 live AWS regions (Oregon, N. Virginia, Ireland) plus Sydney in private beta; control plane in aws-us-west-2. |
| Included per month | 1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion. | 100,000 task runs included free, then $10 per million. The cleanest per-unit rate in this category — Hatchet counts task runs where Cloudflare counts 64 KB operations and Inngest counts steps. |
| Message retention | 4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue. | 3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling. |
| Concurrency | Approximately 120,000 in-flight messages per standard queue (received but not yet deleted); API call rate on standard queues is nearly unlimited. | 500 requests per second of throughput on Team; higher tiers are not published as a number. |
| SOC 2 | Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. | SOC 2 Type II compliant; reports available through the Hatchet Trust Center. |
| HIPAA | Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. | HIPAA compliant per the security docs; the Scale plan ($1,000/mo) lists audit logs and HIPAA. |
| GDPR / data residency | AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data. | GDPR compliant per the security docs; EU data plane available in aws-eu-west-1 (Ireland). |
| Encryption at rest | Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS). | Data stored in Hatchet Cloud is encrypted at rest; API and worker traffic encrypted with TLS in transit. |
| Role-based access control | IAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions. | Hierarchical tenant roles OWNER, ADMIN, MEMBER, VIEWER plus organization roles; payload visibility can be restricted per member. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Amazon SQS: No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/pricing/))
- Hatchet: $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))

### Pricing model

- Amazon SQS: Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AWSQueueService/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Hatchet: Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$N/mo + usage" at $10 per million task runs, with the plan fee buying users, tenants, retention and throughput rather than volume. Self-hosting is offered with support on the enterprise tier. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))

### Regions

- Amazon SQS: 34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/sqs-service.html))
- Hatchet: 3 live AWS regions (Oregon, N. Virginia, Ireland) plus Sydney in private beta; control plane in aws-us-west-2. ([source](https://docs.hatchet.run/v1/region-availability))

### Included per month

- Amazon SQS: 1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AWSQueueService/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Hatchet: 100,000 task runs included free, then $10 per million. The cleanest per-unit rate in this category — Hatchet counts task runs where Cloudflare counts 64 KB operations and Inngest counts steps. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))

### Message retention

- Amazon SQS: 4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/quotas-messages.html))
- Hatchet: 3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))

### Concurrency

- Amazon SQS: Approximately 120,000 in-flight messages per standard queue (received but not yet deleted); API call rate on standard queues is nearly unlimited. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/quotas-queues.html))
- Hatchet: 500 requests per second of throughput on Team; higher tiers are not published as a number. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))

### SOC 2

- Amazon SQS: Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/services-in-scope/SOC/))
- Hatchet: SOC 2 Type II compliant; reports available through the Hatchet Trust Center. ([source](https://docs.hatchet.run/v1/security))

### HIPAA

- Amazon SQS: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/hipaa-eligible-services-reference/))
- Hatchet: HIPAA compliant per the security docs; the Scale plan ($1,000/mo) lists audit logs and HIPAA. ([source](https://docs.hatchet.run/v1/security))

### GDPR / data residency

- Amazon SQS: AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/))
- Hatchet: GDPR compliant per the security docs; EU data plane available in aws-eu-west-1 (Ireland). ([source](https://docs.hatchet.run/v1/security))

### Encryption at rest

- Amazon SQS: Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS). ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/sqs-server-side-encryption.html))
- Hatchet: Data stored in Hatchet Cloud is encrypted at rest; API and worker traffic encrypted with TLS in transit. ([source](https://docs.hatchet.run/v1/security))

### Role-based access control

- Amazon SQS: IAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/sqs-overview-of-managing-access.html))
- Hatchet: Hierarchical tenant roles OWNER, ADMIN, MEMBER, VIEWER plus organization roles; payload visibility can be restricted per member. ([source](https://docs.hatchet.run/v1/user-roles))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Amazon SQS if AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.

Pick Hatchet if Task workloads that want a countable unit — 100,000 runs free and $10 per million is the least ambiguous pricing in this category.

Consider something else: Amazon SQS — Billing is per request rather than per message, and a 1 MiB payload counts as sixteen, so chatty polling or large messages cost far more than the message count suggests.

Consider something else: Hatchet — The jump from free to the first paid tier is $500 a month, which buys retention and throughput rather than volume, so a small production workload pays a lot for features it may not need.

## Documented by only one

- Maximum message size: Amazon SQS: 256 KB per message. A single request carries 1 to 10 messages up to 1 MiB total, and each 64 KB chunk of payload is billed as one request.
- Maximum delay: Amazon SQS: 15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
- Dead letter queue: Amazon SQS: Supported
- ISO 27001: Amazon SQS: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
- PCI DSS: Amazon SQS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
- Customer-managed keys: Amazon SQS: Supported via SSE-KMS: queues can use a customer managed KMS key created and policy-controlled in AWS KMS.
- Private networking / VPC: Amazon SQS: Interface VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) let a VPC reach SQS privately, including FIPS endpoints; HTTPS endpoints only.
- Dedicated infrastructure: Hatchet: Bring-your-own-cloud and self-host support on the Enterprise plan (contact sales).

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Amazon SQS or Hatchet?**

Amazon SQS: No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.
Hatchet: $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month.

**Should I choose Amazon SQS or Hatchet?**

Pick Amazon SQS if AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.
Pick Hatchet if Task workloads that want a countable unit — 100,000 runs free and $10 per million is the least ambiguous pricing in this category.