Cloudflare Queues vs Inngest
A comparison of Cloudflare Queues and Inngest built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- Pick Cloudflare Queues if
- Workers applications that want a queue with no egress or throughput charges and a retention window measured in days rather than hours.
- Pick Inngest if
- Multi-step workflows that need durable execution and retries between steps, rather than a bare queue you write a consumer for.
3 sourced criteria separate them:
- Included per month
- Cloudflare Queues: 1,000,000 operations a month on Workers Paid, then $0.40 per million. An operation is each 64 KB written, read or deleted, so a typical message costs three — Cloudflare's own formula is ((messages × 3) − 1,000,000) / 1,000,000 × $0.40. Workers Free allows 10,000 operations a day.
- Inngest: 50,000 executions a month on the free Hobby plan and 1,000,000 on Pro, pay-as-you-go to 20M. An execution is one function run or one step, so a run with two steps counts as three.
- Message retention
- Cloudflare Queues: 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours.
- Inngest: Queue depth rather than a time window: 100,000 queued items on the free plan and 1,000,000 or more on Pro. Trace retention is 7 days on Pro and 90 on Enterprise.
- Concurrency
- Cloudflare Queues: 250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second and a 25 GB backlog.
- Inngest: 5 concurrent steps on the free plan, 100 or more on Pro, custom on Enterprise.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Cloudflare Queues 0
Inngest 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Cloudflare Queues | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Queues | ||
| Included per month | 1,000,000 operations a month on Workers Paid, then $0.40 per million. An operation is each 64 KB written, read or deleted, so a typical message costs three — Cloudflare's own formula is ((messages × 3) − 1,000,000) / 1,000,000 × $0.40. Workers Free allows 10,000 operations a day. | 50,000 executions a month on the free Hobby plan and 1,000,000 on Pro, pay-as-you-go to 20M. An execution is one function run or one step, so a run with two steps counts as three. |
| Message retention | 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours. | Queue depth rather than a time window: 100,000 queued items on the free plan and 1,000,000 or more on Pro. Trace retention is 7 days on Pro and 90 on Enterprise. |
| Concurrency | 250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second and a 25 GB backlog. | 5 concurrent steps on the free plan, 100 or more on Pro, custom on Enterprise. |
Where they differ.
Included per month
- Cloudflare Queues
- 1,000,000 operations a month on Workers Paid, then $0.40 per million. An operation is each 64 KB written, read or deleted, so a typical message costs three — Cloudflare's own formula is ((messages × 3) − 1,000,000) / 1,000,000 × $0.40. Workers Free allows 10,000 operations a day.
- Inngest
- 50,000 executions a month on the free Hobby plan and 1,000,000 on Pro, pay-as-you-go to 20M. An execution is one function run or one step, so a run with two steps counts as three.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Cloudflare Queues docs ↗
“1,000,000 operations/month included + $0.40/million operations [...] An operation is counted for each 64 KB of data that is written, read, or deleted. [...] In most cases, it takes 3 operations to deliver a message [...] 10,000 operations/day included”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“50k executions [...] 1M executions included Pay as you go up to 20M [...] (30,000 runs × 2 steps per run) + 30,000 runs = 90,000 executions [...] A single durable function run or step execution”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Message retention
- Cloudflare Queues
- 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours.
- Inngest
- Queue depth rather than a time window: 100,000 queued items on the free plan and 1,000,000 or more on Pro. Trace retention is 7 days on Pro and 90 on Enterprise.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Cloudflare Queues docs ↗
“Message retention | 24 hours (non-configurable) | 4 days default, configurable up to 14 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“100k queue depth [...] 1M+ queue depth [...] Granular tracing, metrics, alerts + 7 day trace retention [...] Advanced tracing, metrics, alerts + 90 day trace retention”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Concurrency
250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second and a 25 GB backlog.
5 concurrent steps on the free plan, 100 or more on Pro, custom on Enterprise.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Limits — Cloudflare Queues docs ↗
“Concurrent consumer invocations | 250 push-based only [...] Per-queue message throughput | 5,000 messages per second [...] Per-queue backlog size | 25GB”
Read 2026-09-06 · official docs
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“5 concurrent steps [...] 100+ concurrent steps [...] Custom concurrent steps”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Which should you choose?
Choose Cloudflare Queues if…
Workers applications that want a queue with no egress or throughput charges and a retention window measured in days rather than hours.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Inngest if…
Multi-step workflows that need durable execution and retries between steps, rather than a bare queue you write a consumer for.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Cloudflare Queues: Billing is per 64 KB operation rather than per message, so a large payload or a chatty retry loop costs several times what the message count suggests.
- Inngest: Every step is a billable execution, so a three-step workflow costs three times what the run count implies, and the free plan allows five concurrent steps.
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Should I choose Cloudflare Queues or Inngest?
Pick Cloudflare Queues if Workers applications that want a queue with no egress or throughput charges and a retention window measured in days rather than hours.
Pick Inngest if Multi-step workflows that need durable execution and retries between steps, rather than a bare queue you write a consumer for.