# Cloudflare Queues vs Trigger.dev

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/cloudflare-queues-vs-trigger-dev/

Every value below is read from Cloudflare Queues's and Trigger.dev's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Cloudflare Queues | Trigger.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| 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. | Credits rather than a message or execution count: $5 a month free, $10 included on Hobby and $50 on Pro, spent against compute. |
| Message retention | 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours. | Log retention of 1 day on the free plan, 7 days on Hobby and 30 days on Pro, with the query period matching. |
| Concurrency | 250 concurrent consumer invocations, push-based only, with per-queue throughput capped at 5,000 messages a second and a 25 GB backlog. | 20 concurrent runs on the free plan, 50 on Hobby, and more on Pro at $10 a month per additional 50. |

## 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. ([source](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/platform/pricing/))
- Trigger.dev: Credits rather than a message or execution count: $5 a month free, $10 included on Hobby and $50 on Pro, spent against compute. ([source](https://trigger.dev/pricing))

### Message retention

- Cloudflare Queues: 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours. ([source](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/platform/pricing/))
- Trigger.dev: Log retention of 1 day on the free plan, 7 days on Hobby and 30 days on Pro, with the query period matching. ([source](https://trigger.dev/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/platform/limits/))
- Trigger.dev: 20 concurrent runs on the free plan, 50 on Hobby, and more on Pro at $10 a month per additional 50. ([source](https://trigger.dev/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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 Trigger.dev if Teams that want background jobs written as normal code with the bill expressed as compute credits rather than a per-message meter.

Consider something else: 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.

Consider something else: Trigger.dev — Concurrency is the axis that forces an upgrade — 20 simultaneous runs on free, 50 on Hobby, then $10 a month per additional 50.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: Trigger.dev: $10/month for Hobby, which includes $10 of credits; Pro is $50/month including $50 of credits.
- Pricing model: Trigger.dev: A monthly plan fee that is also a credit balance — the fee buys compute rather than sitting on top of it — with concurrency, preview branches, dashboards and schedules each priced as separate add-ons beyond the plan's allowance.
- Maximum message size: Cloudflare Queues: 128 KB per message, with roughly 100 bytes of that taken by internal metadata. Messages above 64 KB are billed as multiple operations.
- Maximum delay: Cloudflare Queues: 24 hours, set with delaySeconds when sending or retrying.
- Dead letter queue: Cloudflare Queues: Supported

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Cloudflare Queues or Trigger.dev?**

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 Trigger.dev if Teams that want background jobs written as normal code with the bill expressed as compute credits rather than a per-message meter.