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Amazon SQS vs Hatchet

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Amazon SQS and Hatchet built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Updated 20 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • 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.
  • 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.

11 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Amazon SQS documentationVisit Hatchet documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAmazon SQSHatchet
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Entry paid planNo 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 modelPer 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.
Infrastructure
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.
Queues
Included per month1,000,000 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.
ConcurrencyApproximately 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.
Compliance
SOC 2Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.SOC 2 Type II compliant; reports available through the Hatchet Trust Center.
HIPAAListed 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 residencyAWS 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 restServer-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 controlIAM 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.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

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.
Hatchet
$500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon SQS Pricing ↗

    “With AWS SQS, you pay only for what you use and there is no minimum fee.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing

  • Pricing — Hatchet ↗

    “Team $500 /mo + usage Everything in Developer, plus: 10 users & 5 tenants 3-day retention 500 RPS throughput [...] Scale $1,000 /mo + usage”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official 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 $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.
Hatchet
Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$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.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Price List API — AWSQueueService, us-east-1 ↗

    “"$0.50 per million Amazon SQS FIFO requests in Tier1 in US East" [...] "$0.40 per million Amazon SQS standard requests in Tier1" [...] "$0.10 per million Amazon SQS fair queue requests in US East"”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

  • Pricing — Hatchet ↗

    “Developer Free + usage $10 per 1M task runs [...] Team $500 /mo + usage [...] SSO Audit logging Bring your own cloud Self-host support Custom SLAs”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Regions

Amazon SQS

34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table.

Hatchet

3 live AWS regions (Oregon, N. Virginia, Ireland) plus Sydney in private beta; control plane in aws-us-west-2.

Sources (2) →

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.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Price List API — AWSQueueService, us-east-1 ↗

    “"First 1,000,000 Amazon SQS Requests per month are free" [...] "$0.40 per million Amazon SQS standard requests in Tier1 in US East" [...] "$0.30 per million ... Tier2" [...] "$0.24 per million ... Tier3"”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

  • Pricing — Hatchet ↗

    “Developer Free + usage $10 per 1M task runs First 100,000 runs included”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Message retention

Amazon SQS

4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.

Hatchet

3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling.

Sources (2) →

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.
Hatchet
500 requests per second of throughput on Team; higher tiers are not published as a number.
Sources (2) →

SOC 2

Amazon SQS
Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Hatchet
SOC 2 Type II compliant; reports available through the Hatchet Trust Center.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Services in Scope for SOC ↗

    “Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) listed with a checkmark on the SOC services-in-scope page.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site

  • Security - Hatchet Documentation ↗

    “Hatchet is SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant. Company-level security practices, compliance reports, and security documentation are available at the Hatchet Trust Center .”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

HIPAA

Amazon SQS
Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
Hatchet
HIPAA compliant per the security docs; the Scale plan ($1,000/mo) lists audit logs and HIPAA.
Sources (2) →

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.
Hatchet
GDPR compliant per the security docs; EU data plane available in aws-eu-west-1 (Ireland).
Sources (2) →
  • GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗

    “AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site

  • Security - Hatchet Documentation ↗

    “Hatchet is SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

Encryption at rest

Amazon SQS
Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).
Hatchet
Data stored in Hatchet Cloud is encrypted at rest; API and worker traffic encrypted with TLS in transit.
Sources (2) →

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.
Hatchet
Hierarchical tenant roles OWNER, ADMIN, MEMBER, VIEWER plus organization roles; payload visibility can be restricted per member.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.

Maximum message sizeAmazon 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 delayAmazon SQS: 15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
Dead letter queueAmazon SQS: Supported
ISO 27001Amazon 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 DSSAmazon SQS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Customer-managed keysAmazon SQS: Supported via SSE-KMS: queues can use a customer managed KMS key created and policy-controlled in AWS KMS.
Private networking / VPCAmazon SQS: Interface VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) let a VPC reach SQS privately, including FIPS endpoints; HTTPS endpoints only.
Dedicated infrastructureHatchet: Bring-your-own-cloud and self-host support on the Enterprise plan (contact sales).
04.

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.

Provider pages

Amazon SQSAWS managed message queue, billed per request with standard and FIFO rates and a permanent free tier.HatchetDurable task queue billed per task run, with a free tier, published throughput limits and a self-hosted option.

Related comparisons

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Every page here is sourced and dated.