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Azure Queue Storage vs Temporal

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Azure Queue Storage and Temporal built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 27 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • 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.
  • Temporal: You want to budget by counting jobs: pay-as-you-go bills from $50 per million Actions, a unit that does not map onto messages or task runs, plus storage and 10% of usage for support; the $150 starting credit lasts 90 days.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Azure Queue Storage alternatives · Temporal alternatives

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

Visit Azure Queue Storage documentationVisit Temporal 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.

CriterionAzure Queue StorageTemporal
Pricing
Free tierNoNo
Kind of free offerFree creditFree credit
Pricing modelPer region and per redundancy, metered on operations and on stored data; LRS, ZRS, GRS and GZRS are each priced separately.Pay-as-you-go per Action with no base monthly fee: from $50 per million Actions, falling with volume to $25 self-serve. Storage is billed separately per GB-hour ($0.042 active, $0.00105 retained), and Developer support costs 10% of usage. The Business support add-on is the greater of $500/month or 10% of usage.
Infrastructure
Uptime SLANot published as a web page. Microsoft consolidated its per-service SLAs into one downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Intune; the former azure.microsoft.com SLA URLs now redirect to its licensing viewer.99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options.
Queues
Included per monthNone included. Queue operations are metered from the first one at $0.004 per 10,000 Class 1 operations on LRS in East US.No monthly Actions allocation on pay-as-you-go, which bills every Action used. Business includes 2.5 million Actions a month, and Enterprise and Mission Critical include 10 million. An Action is Temporal's own unit (a workflow operation) and is not comparable to a message, operation or 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 retention7 days by default, set per message with messagettl; since version 2017-07-29 it can be any positive number, or -1 for a message that never expires.Closed workflow Event History is kept for a Retention Period set per Namespace, up to 90 days on Temporal Cloud; longer needs the Export feature. Business includes 2.5 GB Active and 100 GB Retained Storage. Recorded without a magnitude: this is workflow-history retention, not how long an undelivered message survives.
Maximum delayTime-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.
Compliance
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.
ISO 27001Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.ISMS is informed by the NIST Cybersecurity Framework; the DPA's certification/assurance measure names only third-party SOC 2 Type II audits. Adjacent evidence: the DPA claims no ISO 27001 certificate, but no Temporal page explicitly denies one.
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.
PCI DSSListed among Azure's compliance offerings (PCI DSS) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.Terms of Service bar customers from submitting payment card information to the Hosted Services; only contact name, title and email address are permitted. Clause 1.6 Personal Data; a contractual data restriction, not a statement about PCI DSS certification.

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.

Pricing model

Azure Queue Storage
Per region and per redundancy, metered on operations and on stored data; LRS, ZRS, GRS and GZRS are each priced separately.
Temporal
Pay-as-you-go per Action with no base monthly fee: from $50 per million Actions, falling with volume to $25 self-serve. Storage is billed separately per GB-hour ($0.042 active, $0.00105 retained), and Developer support costs 10% of usage. The Business support add-on is the greater of $500/month or 10% of usage.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Retail Prices API — Queues v2, East US ↗

    “{"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.004,"unitPrice":0.004,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"994899e2-0f8f-4696-80a6-d9bae770c13b","meterName":"LRS Class 1 Operations"," [...] {"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.045,"unitPrice":0.045,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"d6b6271c-3113-44a9-9d62-b2da937da902","meterName":"LRS Data Stored"," [...] {"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.0598,"unitPrice":0.0598,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2022-09-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"2187dabd-0f89-4dae-b031-8ba726c1f598","meterName":"GRS Data Stored","”

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

  • Temporal Platform Pricing Options | Temporal ↗

    “Pay-As-You-Go Starting at $50 per million actions [...] No base monthly fee $0.042/GBhr Active Storage $0.00105/GBhr Retained Storage Developer support for 10% of usage 99.9% SLA and 99.99% HA Options SSO via SAML Volume Discounts Self service down to $25 per million actions [...] Price: Greater of $500/mo or 10% of usage”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official pricing · Report a correction

Uptime SLA

Azure Queue Storage
Not published as a web page. Microsoft consolidated its per-service SLAs into one downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Intune; the former azure.microsoft.com SLA URLs now redirect to its licensing viewer.
Temporal
99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options.
Sources (2) →

Included per month

Azure Queue Storage
None included. Queue operations are metered from the first one at $0.004 per 10,000 Class 1 operations on LRS in East US.
Temporal
No monthly Actions allocation on pay-as-you-go, which bills every Action used. Business includes 2.5 million Actions a month, and Enterprise and Mission Critical include 10 million. An Action is Temporal's own unit (a workflow operation) and is not comparable to a message, operation or execution elsewhere in this category.
Sources (2) →
  • Azure Retail Prices API — Queues v2, East US ↗

    “{"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.004,"unitPrice":0.004,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"994899e2-0f8f-4696-80a6-d9bae770c13b","meterName":"LRS Class 1 Operations"," [...] {"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.004,"unitPrice":0.004,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"fcf5a755-9fce-4c78-8931-af0ff4562395","meterName":"Class 2 Operations","”

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

  • Temporal Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Some plans include a monthly Actions allocation (2.5M on Business, 10M on Enterprise/Mission Critical). [...] On the Temporal Cloud pay-as-you-go model, you are only billed for what you use (actions, storage, support).”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official pricing · Report a correction

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.

Temporal

2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable.

Sources (2) →

Message retention

Azure Queue Storage
7 days by default, set per message with messagettl; since version 2017-07-29 it can be any positive number, or -1 for a message that never expires.
Temporal
Closed workflow Event History is kept for a Retention Period set per Namespace, up to 90 days on Temporal Cloud; longer needs the Export feature. Business includes 2.5 GB Active and 100 GB Retained Storage. Recorded without a magnitude: this is workflow-history retention, not how long an undelivered message survives.
Sources (2) →
  • Put Message — Azure Queue Storage REST API ↗

    “For version 2017-07-29 and later, the maximum time-to-live can be any positive number, and -1, which indicates that the message doesn't expire. If this parameter is omitted, the default time-to-live is 7 days.”

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

  • Temporal Cloud pricing | Temporal Documentation ↗

    “Temporal Cloud stores Event History for a defined Retention Period [...] When closed Workflow Histories need to be retained for more than the 90-day maximum period on Temporal Cloud, we recommend using our Export feature. [...] 2.5M Actions - 2.5 GB Active Storage - 100 GB Retained Storage”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction

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.
Temporal
Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud.
Sources (2) →

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.
Temporal
SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges.
Sources (2) →

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.
Temporal
ISMS is informed by the NIST Cybersecurity Framework; the DPA's certification/assurance measure names only third-party SOC 2 Type II audits. Adjacent evidence: the DPA claims no ISO 27001 certificate, but no Temporal page explicitly denies one.
Sources (2) →

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.
Temporal
Temporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications.
Sources (2) →

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.
Temporal
Terms of Service bar customers from submitting payment card information to the Hosted Services; only contact name, title and email address are permitted. Clause 1.6 Personal Data; a contractual data restriction, not a statement about PCI DSS certification.
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 includesAzure Queue Storage: $200 of Azure credit for 30 days on a new account; no standing Queue Storage allowance is published.
Credit card to startTemporal: Yes — Card required to sign up for Temporal Cloud; not charged in the first 90 days while credits remain.
When the free offer endsAzure Queue Storage: 30 days.
Entry paid planTemporal: No plan fee or minimum: pay-as-you-go has no base monthly fee and bills usage from $50 per million Actions, plus storage and Developer support at 10% of usage. New accounts start with $150 in credits valid for 90 days. The Business support add-on starts at $500/month.
Startup credit programTemporal: Temporal Cloud startup credits: $6,000, for funded startups that have raised $30M or less.
RegionsTemporal: 20 regions for Temporal Cloud Namespaces: 14 AWS regions and 6 Google Cloud regions, each with a PrivateLink or Private Service Connect endpoint.
ConcurrencyTemporal: 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.
Support on entry paid planTemporal: Developer support comes with pay-as-you-go and is billed at 10% of usage. The Business support add-on, the greater of $500/month or 10% of usage, adds advanced technical support with a 2-hour P0 SLA in business hours.
Response time commitmentTemporal: P0 response: 1 business day on Developer (the pay-as-you-go support level), 2 business hours on Business, 30 minutes on Enterprise and 15 minutes on Mission Critical. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
GDPR / data residencyTemporal: GDPR compliant with a DPA reflecting GDPR; Namespaces do not share data processing or storage across regional boundaries.
Encryption at restTemporal: Persistence layer and Elasticsearch index encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; TLS 1.3 in transit.
Customer-managed keysTemporal: 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 controlTemporal: Predefined account-level roles (Account Owner, Global Admin, Developer, Finance Admin, Read-Only) plus Namespace-level permissions (Admin, Write, Read-Only), with optional Custom Roles for granular access.
Private networking / VPCTemporal: AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect to Namespaces, alongside the default public endpoints.
Dedicated infrastructureTemporal: Temporal Cloud is a multi-tenant service; Namespaces are logically segregated and do not share data processing or data storage across regional boundaries. No single-tenant or dedicated-cell option is offered anywhere in the Cloud docs or the plan matrix.
04.

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.

Provider pages

Azure Queue StorageMicrosoft's managed queue, billed per 10,000 operations with queued messages charged as stored data.TemporalDurable execution platform metered in Actions, with storage split between open and closed workflows, and a self-hosted open-source edition.

Related comparisons

Amazon SQS vs Azure Queue StorageAmazon SQS vs TemporalAzure Queue Storage vs Google Cloud Pub/SubCloudflare Queues vs Azure Queue StorageCloudflare Queues vs TemporalGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub vs TemporalHatchet vs TemporalTemporal vs Inngest

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.