# Azure Queue Storage vs Temporal

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/azure-queue-storage-vs-temporal/

Every value below is read from Azure Queue Storage's and Temporal's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Azure Queue Storage | Temporal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | Per 10,000 operations plus stored data, with the rate set by redundancy: LRS Class 1 operations are $0.004 per 10,000, ZRS and GRS cost more for the same call. There is no plan fee and no included allowance. | Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure. |
| Included per month | None included — every operation is billed. Class 1 operations are $0.004 per 10,000 on LRS in East US, which is $0.40 per million, matching Amazon SQS's standard rate exactly. | 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category. |
| Maximum message size | 64 KB per message. A queue may hold millions of messages, bounded only by the storage account's capacity rather than a queue-level ceiling. | 2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable. |
| Message retention | Messages in the queue are billed as stored data at $0.045 per GB-month on LRS, rather than granted as a retention window. Azure charges for depth, not for time. | Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks. |
| Maximum delay | Time-to-live defaults to seven days and can be set to any positive number, or to -1 for a message that never expires — the only queue here with an unbounded option. | Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud. |
| SOC 2 | Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. | SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges. |
| HIPAA | Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (HIPAA) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. | Temporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Azure Queue Storage: Per 10,000 operations plus stored data, with the rate set by redundancy: LRS Class 1 operations are $0.004 per 10,000, ZRS and GRS cost more for the same call. There is no plan fee and no included allowance. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices))
- Temporal: Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

### Included per month

- Azure Queue Storage: None included — every operation is billed. Class 1 operations are $0.004 per 10,000 on LRS in East US, which is $0.40 per million, matching Amazon SQS's standard rate exactly. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices))
- Temporal: 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

### Maximum message size

- Azure Queue Storage: 64 KB per message. A queue may hold millions of messages, bounded only by the storage account's capacity rather than a queue-level ceiling. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/queues/storage-queues-introduction))
- Temporal: 2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable. ([source](https://docs.temporal.io/cloud/limits))

### Message retention

- Azure Queue Storage: Messages in the queue are billed as stored data at $0.045 per GB-month on LRS, rather than granted as a retention window. Azure charges for depth, not for time. ([source](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices))
- Temporal: Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

### Maximum delay

- Azure Queue Storage: Time-to-live defaults to seven days and can be set to any positive number, or to -1 for a message that never expires — the only queue here with an unbounded option. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/queues/storage-queues-introduction))
- Temporal: Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud. ([source](https://docs.temporal.io/cloud/limits))

### SOC 2

- Azure Queue Storage: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/))
- Temporal: SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges. ([source](https://temporal.io/security))

### HIPAA

- Azure Queue Storage: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (HIPAA) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. ([source](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/))
- Temporal: Temporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications. ([source](https://temporal.io/security))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Azure Queue Storage if Azure-resident systems that want a queue billed like storage — operations plus depth, no plan to choose and no capacity to provision.

Pick Temporal if Long-running, stateful workflows where losing execution history is the failure that matters — Temporal keeps event history as first-class storage rather than logs that expire.

Consider something else: Azure Queue Storage — Queued messages are billed as stored data, so a backlog costs money by the gigabyte-month, and there is no free allowance at all where SQS gives a million requests a month.

Consider something else: Temporal — Entry is $100 a month before any usage, and the unit is an Action, which does not map onto messages or task runs — budgeting requires modelling your workflows, not counting jobs.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Temporal: Yes
- Entry paid plan: Temporal: $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions.
- Startup credit program: Temporal: Temporal Cloud startup credits: $6,000, for funded startups that have raised $30M or less.
- Regions: Temporal: 20 regions for Temporal Cloud Namespaces: 14 AWS regions and 6 Google Cloud regions, each with a PrivateLink or Private Service Connect endpoint.
- Concurrency: Temporal: 500 Actions per second per Namespace by default, auto-scaling above that with On-Demand Capacity; 20,000 Activity and 20,000 Workflow Task pollers per Namespace.
- ISO 27001: Azure Queue Storage: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
- GDPR / data residency: Temporal: GDPR compliant with a DPA reflecting GDPR; Namespaces do not share data processing or storage across regional boundaries.
- PCI DSS: Azure Queue Storage: Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (PCI DSS) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
- Encryption at rest: Temporal: Persistence layer and Elasticsearch index encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; TLS 1.3 in transit.
- Customer-managed keys: Temporal: Client-side Data Converter encrypts payloads with your keys on your Workers before they reach Temporal Cloud, which cannot decrypt them; no server-side KMS option stated.
- Role-based access control: Temporal: Account-level roles (administrator, developer, read-only) plus Namespace-level permissions; custom roles, SAML and SCIM documented.
- Private networking / VPC: Temporal: AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect to Namespaces, alongside the default public endpoints.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Azure Queue Storage or Temporal?**

Pick Azure Queue Storage if Azure-resident systems that want a queue billed like storage — operations plus depth, no plan to choose and no capacity to provision.
Pick Temporal if Long-running, stateful workflows where losing execution history is the failure that matters — Temporal keeps event history as first-class storage rather than logs that expire.