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Amazon SQS vs Zeplo

SEPT 2026 audit

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

Updated 19 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 Zeplo if…

Turning an HTTP endpoint into a queued, retried job without running a consumer — and keeping a month of logs while doing it, which nothing else here offers on a free plan.

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.
  • Zeplo: The free tier's overage is $20 per 100,000 requests, twenty times the Company plan's rate, so staying free past 500 requests is the most expensive way to use it.

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

Visit Amazon SQS documentationVisit Zeplo 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 SQSZeplo
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Entry paid planNo paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.$39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each.
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.Per HTTP request rather than per message or per execution, with unlimited jobs on every tier and team size as a separate axis — three members included on Company, $15 for each beyond.
Infrastructure
Regions34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table.Hosted on Google Cloud Platform; no selectable region is offered and data may be transferred between countries.
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.500 requests free, then $20 per 100,000. The Company plan includes 1,000,000 requests and charges $10 per million beyond — five times cheaper per request than the free plan's overage rate.
Maximum message size
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.
256 KB inline request body (unlimited via S3 offload); plan payload caps are 64 KB on Developer and 1 MB on Company.
Message retention
4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.
30 days of log retention on every plan — free, Company and Enterprise alike. The longest window in this category by a wide margin.
Maximum delay
15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
30 days (2,592,000 seconds) maximum delay_seconds per request.
ConcurrencyApproximately 120,000 in-flight messages per standard queue (received but not yet deleted); API call rate on standard queues is nearly unlimited.API rate limit rather than a concurrency figure: 100 requests/min on Developer (Free) and 2,000 requests/min on Company ($39/mo).

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.
Zeplo
$39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each.
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 — Zeplo ↗

    “Company [...] $39 /month 1M requests included $10 / million requests Team size: 3 users [...] Addition team members $15 $15 $15”

    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.
Zeplo
Per HTTP request rather than per message or per execution, with unlimited jobs on every tier and team size as a separate axis — three members included on Company, $15 for each beyond.
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 — Zeplo ↗

    “Jobs Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Included team members 1 3 Custom Addition team members $15 $15 $15 Log retention 30 days 30 days 30 days”

    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.
Zeplo
Hosted on Google Cloud Platform; no selectable region is offered and data may be transferred between countries.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon Simple Queue Service endpoints and quotas - AWS General Reference ↗

    “Region Name Region Endpoint Protocol US East (Ohio) us-east-2 sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com [...] AWS GovCloud (US-West) us-gov-west-1 sqs.us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

  • Privacy Policy - Zeplo ↗

    “Zeplo currently uses the following services to store your information: Google Cloud Platform Cross-border data transfers Information that Zeplo collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site

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.
Zeplo
500 requests free, then $20 per 100,000. The Company plan includes 1,000,000 requests and charges $10 per million beyond — five times cheaper per request than the free plan's overage rate.
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 — Zeplo ↗

    “Free 500 requests included $20 / 100k requests [...] $39 /month 1M requests included $10 / million requests”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

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.

Zeplo

256 KB inline request body (unlimited via S3 offload); plan payload caps are 64 KB on Developer and 1 MB on Company.

Sources (2) →
  • Amazon SQS Pricing — AWS ↗

    “A single request can have from 1 to 10 messages, up to a maximum total payload of 1 MiB. [...] Each 64 KB chunk of a payload is billed as 1 request (for example, an API action with a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests).”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs

  • Limits - Zeplo docs ↗

    “Maximum request body size 256KB inline, unlimited via S3 offload [...] Max payload 64KB 1MB”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

Message retention

Amazon SQS

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

Zeplo

30 days of log retention on every plan — free, Company and Enterprise alike. The longest window in this category by a wide margin.

Sources (2) →

Maximum delay

Amazon SQS

15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.

Zeplo

30 days (2,592,000 seconds) maximum delay_seconds per request.

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.
Zeplo
API rate limit rather than a concurrency figure: 100 requests/min on Developer (Free) and 2,000 requests/min on Company ($39/mo).
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon SQS standard queue quotas - Amazon Simple Queue Service ↗

    “For most standard queues (depending on queue traffic and message backlog), there can be a maximum of approximately 120,000 in flight messages (received from a queue by a consumer, but not yet deleted from the queue).”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

  • Limits - Zeplo docs ↗

    “Plan API rate limit Developer (Free) 100 requests/min Company ($39/mo) 2,000 requests/min”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

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.

Dead letter queueAmazon SQS: Supported
SOC 2Amazon SQS: Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
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.
HIPAAAmazon SQS: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
GDPR / data residencyAmazon 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.
PCI DSSAmazon SQS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Encryption at restAmazon SQS: Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).
Customer-managed keysAmazon SQS: Supported via SSE-KMS: queues can use a customer managed KMS key created and policy-controlled in AWS KMS.
Role-based access controlAmazon SQS: IAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions.
Private networking / VPCAmazon SQS: Interface VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) let a VPC reach SQS privately, including FIPS endpoints; HTTPS endpoints only.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Amazon SQS or Zeplo?

Amazon SQS: No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.

Zeplo: $39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each.

Should I choose Amazon SQS or Zeplo?

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 Zeplo if Turning an HTTP endpoint into a queued, retried job without running a consumer — and keeping a month of logs while doing it, which nothing else here offers on a free plan.

Provider pages

Amazon SQSAWS managed message queue, billed per request with standard and FIFO rates and a permanent free tier.ZeploHTTP request queue priced per request, with 30-day log retention on every plan including free.

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Every page here is sourced and dated.