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Cloudflare Queues vs Upstash QStash

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Cloudflare Queues and Upstash QStash built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 11 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

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 Upstash QStash if…

HTTP-first workloads that want scheduling and delay measured in months rather than a day, without running a consumer process.

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.
  • Upstash QStash: The free plan is capped per day rather than per month, so a single burst can exhaust it while a monthly allowance elsewhere would absorb the same volume.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Cloudflare Queues alternatives · Upstash QStash alternatives

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

Visit Cloudflare Queues documentationVisit Upstash QStash 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.

CriterionCloudflare QueuesUpstash QStash
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree tierFree tier
What the free plan includesThe first 1,000,000 standard operations a month are not billed; beyond that the rate is $0.40 per million, and each message costs three operations.1,000 messages a day.
Pricing modelBilled per operation, not per message: one operation per 64 KB written, read or deleted, and a message larger than 64 KB counts as several. Cloudflare states a normal delivery takes three operations — one write, one read, one delete — so a million messages is nearer three million operations. Workers Paid includes 1,000,000 operations a month, then $0.40 per million; the free plan allows 10,000 a day.Per message rather than per operation, metered against a daily ceiling on the free plan and priced at $1 per 100,000 on Pay as You Go, with monthly bandwidth caps alongside — 50 GB on the smaller plans, 1 TB and 5 TB above.
Queues
Included per month1,000,000 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.1,000 messages a day on the free plan. Pay as You Go is $1 per 100,000 messages with no daily cap; fixed plans run $180 a month for 1M a day and $420 for 10M.
Maximum message size
128 KB per message, with roughly 100 bytes of that taken by internal metadata.
1 MB on the free plan, 10 MB on Pay as You Go and 50 MB on the fixed plans.
Message retention
4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours.
Dead letter queue retention of 3 days on the free plan, 7 days on Pay as You Go, 30 days and 3 months on the fixed plans.
Maximum delay24 hours, set with delaySeconds when sending or retrying.7 days on the free plan; 1 year on Pay as You Go and unlimited on the fixed plans.
Dead letter queueSupportedSupported

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.

What the free plan includes

Cloudflare Queues
The first 1,000,000 standard operations a month are not billed; beyond that the rate is $0.40 per million, and each message costs three operations.
Upstash QStash
1,000 messages a day.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Cloudflare Queues
Billed per operation, not per message: one operation per 64 KB written, read or deleted, and a message larger than 64 KB counts as several. Cloudflare states a normal delivery takes three operations — one write, one read, one delete — so a million messages is nearer three million operations. Workers Paid includes 1,000,000 operations a month, then $0.40 per million; the free plan allows 10,000 a day.
Upstash QStash
Per message rather than per operation, metered against a daily ceiling on the free plan and priced at $1 per 100,000 on Pay as You Go, with monthly bandwidth caps alongside — 50 GB on the smaller plans, 1 TB and 5 TB above.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Cloudflare Queues docs ↗

    “An operation is counted for each 64 KB of data that is written, read, or deleted. [...] Standard operations 10,000 operations/day included 1,000,000 operations/month included + $0.40/million operations [...] In most cases, it takes 3 operations to deliver a message: 1 write, 1 read, and 1 delete.”

    Read 2026-09-07 · official docs · Report a correction

  • QStash Pricing — Upstash ↗

    “$1 per 100K messages [...] Max Messages per Day 1,000 Unlimited 1 M 10 M 100M+ [...] Max Monthly Bandwidth 50 GB 50 GB 1 TB 5 TB Unlimited”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

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.
Upstash QStash
1,000 messages a day on the free plan. Pay as You Go is $1 per 100,000 messages with no daily cap; fixed plans run $180 a month for 1M a day and $420 for 10M.
Sources (2) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • QStash Pricing — Upstash ↗

    “Free $0 [...] Messages per Day 1,000 [...] Pay as You Go $1 per 100K messages [...] Messages per Day Unlimited [...] $180 / month [...] 1M [...] $420 [...] 10M”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Maximum message size

Cloudflare Queues

128 KB per message, with roughly 100 bytes of that taken by internal metadata.

Upstash QStash

1 MB on the free plan, 10 MB on Pay as You Go and 50 MB on the fixed plans.

Sources (2) →

Message retention

Cloudflare Queues

4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours.

Upstash QStash

Dead letter queue retention of 3 days on the free plan, 7 days on Pay as You Go, 30 days and 3 months on the fixed plans.

Sources (2) →

Maximum delay

Cloudflare Queues
24 hours, set with delaySeconds when sending or retrying.
Upstash QStash
7 days on the free plan; 1 year on Pay as You Go and unlimited on the fixed plans.
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.

Uptime SLACloudflare Queues: 99.9% monthly uptime, in a dedicated Queues SLA that applies to use of Queues only and names no plan tier, with the same precedence clause as the R2 and Workers SLAs. The remedy is a credit set as a percentage of the fees paid for that product in the preceding 30 days, so the commitment stands on a free account while the compensation for breaching it is worth nothing there.
ConcurrencyCloudflare Queues: 250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Should I choose Cloudflare Queues or Upstash QStash?

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 Upstash QStash if HTTP-first workloads that want scheduling and delay measured in months rather than a day, without running a consumer process.

Provider pages

Cloudflare QueuesMessage queue on Cloudflare Workers, billed per 64 KB operation with no egress or throughput charges.Upstash QStashHTTP-based message queue and scheduler, priced per message with a per-day cap rather than a monthly allowance.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.