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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.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 24 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.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Amazon SQS alternatives · Zeplo alternatives

12 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
Kind of free offerFree tierFree tier
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 retention4 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).
Dead letter queue
Supported
Limited — Dead-letter handling is a webhook fired on permanently failed requests, not a separate queue you consume.
Compliance
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.
Privacy policy permits storage, processing and transfer of personal information between any of the countries in which Zeplo operates. zeplo.io policy, last updated February 7, 2022; the newer v2.zeplo.io policy is silent on transfers.
Encryption at restServer-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).Privacy policy states industry-standard measures including encryption in transit (TLS), encryption at rest, and access controls. v2.zeplo.io policy, last updated February 21, 2026; no cipher or key-management detail published.
Role-based access controlIAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions.Workspaces support multiple members with role-based access; roles are admin, member and viewer. Team invites are managed in the dashboard under Settings, Team; the API invite endpoint takes the same three roles.

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) →

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) →

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) →

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) →

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 · Report a correction

  • Limits - Zeplo docs ↗

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

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

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) →

Dead letter queue

Amazon SQS
Supported
Zeplo
Limited — Dead-letter handling is a webhook fired on permanently failed requests, not a separate queue you consume.
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.
Zeplo
Privacy policy permits storage, processing and transfer of personal information between any of the countries in which Zeplo operates. zeplo.io policy, last updated February 7, 2022; the newer v2.zeplo.io policy is silent on transfers.
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 · Report a correction

  • Zeplo Privacy ↗

    “Information that Zeplo collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which Zeplo operates to enable the use of the information in accordance with this privacy policy. [...] You agree to such cross-border transfers of personal information.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

Encryption at rest

Amazon SQS
Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).
Zeplo
Privacy policy states industry-standard measures including encryption in transit (TLS), encryption at rest, and access controls. v2.zeplo.io policy, last updated February 21, 2026; no cipher or key-management detail published.
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.
Zeplo
Workspaces support multiple members with role-based access; roles are admin, member and viewer. Team invites are managed in the dashboard under Settings, Team; the API invite endpoint takes the same three roles.
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 — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

What the free plan includesZeplo: 500 requests a month, described as free forever, for a single developer with 30-day log retention.
When the free offer endsZeplo: Never — 500 requests a month, free forever.
Uptime SLAAmazon SQS: 99.9% monthly uptime per AWS Region, one figure with no configuration split.
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.
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 infrastructureZeplo: Not listed on the Developer or Company plans; the pricing page says to contact sales for custom volume, SLAs or dedicated infrastructure. From the "Need more?" block under the Developer (free) and Company ($39/mo) plan cards.
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.

Related comparisons

Amazon SQS vs Azure Queue StorageAmazon SQS vs Cloudflare QueuesAmazon SQS vs Google Cloud Pub/SubAmazon SQS vs HatchetAmazon SQS vs InngestAmazon SQS vs TemporalAmazon SQS vs Trigger.devHatchet vs Zeplo

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.