Cloudflare Queues vs Temporal
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Cloudflare Queues and Temporal built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
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 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…
- 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.
- 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: Cloudflare Queues alternatives · Temporal alternatives
9 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
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
Temporal 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Cloudflare Queues | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Kind of free offer | Free tier | Free credit |
| Pricing model | 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. | 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 SLA | 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. | 99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options. |
| 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. | 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 | 128 KB per message, with roughly 100 bytes of that taken by internal metadata. | 2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable. |
| Message retention | 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours. | 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 delay | 24 hours, set with delaySeconds when sending or retrying. | Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud. |
| Concurrency | 250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second. | 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. |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Cloudflare Queues
- Yes
- Temporal
- No
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Queues Pricing — Cloudflare ↗
“Free Usage Billed Usage Price Standard operations”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Temporal Platform Pricing Options | Temporal ↗
“Start for free with $150 in credits [...] Free $150 credits for 90 days”
Read 2026-09-27 · official pricing · Report a correction
Kind of free offer
- Cloudflare Queues
- Free tier
- Temporal
- Free credit
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Queues pricing — Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Workers Free Workers Paid Standard operations 10,000 operations/day included 1,000,000 operations/month included + $0.40/million operations”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Temporal Platform Pricing Options | Temporal ↗
“Start for free with $150 in credits [...] Free $150 credits for 90 days”
Read 2026-09-27 · official pricing · Report a correction
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.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- 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
- 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
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.
99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Queues Service Level Agreement — Cloudflare ↗
“applies to use of queues only [...] cloudflare will provide a monthly uptime percentage of 99.9% for customer's use of queues”
Read 2026-09-21 · official site · Report a correction
- Temporal Platform Pricing Options | Temporal ↗
“Pay-As-You-Go Starting at $50 per million actions [...] Developer support for 10% of usage 99.9% SLA and 99.99% HA Options”
Read 2026-09-27 · 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.
- 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) →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 · 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
128 KB per message, with roughly 100 bytes of that taken by internal metadata.
2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Queues limits — Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Feature Limit Queues 10,000 per account Message size 128 KB 1 Message retries 100 Maximum consumer batch size 100 messages [...] Messages can include up to ~100 bytes of internal metadata that counts towards total message limits.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Limits - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“The max payload for a single request is 2 MB. The max size limit for any given Event History transaction is 4 MB. This limit is non-configurable for Temporal Cloud.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Message retention
- Cloudflare Queues
- 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- Queues pricing — Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Message retention 24 hours (non-configurable) 4 days default, configurable up to 14 days”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · 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
24 hours, set with delaySeconds when sending or retrying.
Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Queues limits — Cloudflare Docs ↗
“visibilityTimeout (pull-based queues) 12 hours delaySeconds (when sending or retrying) 24 hours”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Limits - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“Timer duration limit Timers have a maximum duration of 100 years in Temporal Cloud.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Concurrency
- Cloudflare Queues
- 250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Queues limits — Cloudflare Docs ↗
“Per-queue message throughput 5,000 messages per second 2 Message retention period 3 Configurable up to 14 days. Per-queue backlog size 4 25GB Concurrent consumer invocations 250 push-based only Consumer duration (wall clock time) 15 minutes”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Limits - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“Actions per second Scope: Namespace Default limit: 500 actions per second (APS). [...] Temporal Cloud limits each Namespace to 20,000 Activity pollers and 20,000 Workflow Task pollers concurrently.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Free tier: Cloudflare Queues or Temporal?
Cloudflare Queues: Yes
Temporal: No
Should I choose Cloudflare Queues or Temporal?
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 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.
Comments are hosted by EchoThread, which sets cookies and offers social sign-in. Like the analytics on this site, it does not load until you accept — see the privacy page.