Cloudflare Queues vs Trigger.dev
A comparison of Cloudflare Queues and Trigger.dev 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 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.
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.
- 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.
- Message retention
- Cloudflare Queues: 4 days by default on Workers Paid, configurable up to 14 days. Workers Free is fixed at 24 hours.
- 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.
- 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.
- Trigger.dev: 20 concurrent runs on the free plan, 50 on Hobby, and more on Pro at $10 a month per additional 50.
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
Trigger.dev 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Cloudflare Queues | Trigger.dev |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | 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.
- 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.
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 — Trigger.dev ↗
“$5 / month free credits [...] $10 / month credits included [...] $50 / month credits included”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
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.
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 — Trigger.dev ↗
“1 day log retention 1 day query period [...] 7 day log retention 7 days query period [...] 30 day log 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.
20 concurrent runs on the free plan, 50 on Hobby, and more on Pro at $10 a month per additional 50.
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 — Trigger.dev ↗
“20 concurrent runs [...] 50 concurrent runs [...] Then $10/month per 50”
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 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.
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.
- 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.
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 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.