Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs Hatchet

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Hatchet built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Updated September 202617 criteria comparedSources last checked 8 September 2026

The short answer

Choose Google Cloud Pub/Sub if…

Google Cloud systems that want messaging without capacity planning — throughput is metered rather than provisioned, and 10 GiB a month costs nothing.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Hatchet if…

Task workloads that want a countable unit — 100,000 runs free and $10 per million is the least ambiguous pricing in this category.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Throughput counts bytes both in and out, so a message read once is billed twice, and retention is a storage charge rather than an included window — the headline $40 per TiB is not the whole bill.
Hatchet: The jump from free to the first paid tier is $500 a month, which buys retention and throughput rather than volume, so a small production workload pays a lot for features it may not need.

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

Visit Google Cloud Pub/Sub documentation Visit Hatchet 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.

Criterion	Google Cloud Pub/Sub	Hatchet
Pricing
Free tier	Yes	Yes
Pricing model	Three meters: throughput at $40 per TiB counting both publish and subscribe, storage at $0.27 per GiB-month for anything retained beyond a day, and data transfer when throughput crosses a zone or region boundary. Pub/Sub Lite is a separate product priced on reserved capacity rather than usage.	Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$N/mo + usage" at $10 per million task runs, with the plan fee buying users, tenants, retention and throughput rather than volume. Self-hosting is offered with support on the enterprise tier.
Queues
Included per month	10 GiB of throughput free per billing account per calendar month, then $40 per TiB. Throughput counts bytes written to a topic plus bytes read from a subscription, so a message published once and read once is billed twice. BigQuery and Cloud Storage subscriptions are $50 per TiB and the 10 GiB does not apply to them; import topics run $50 or $80 per TiB by source.	100,000 task runs included free, then $10 per million. The cleanest per-unit rate in this category — Hatchet counts task runs where Cloudflare counts 64 KB operations and Inngest counts steps.
Message retention	Retention is configurable and charged rather than granted: $0.27 per GiB-month for messages a topic is configured to retain, for snapshots, and for a subscription's backlog older than one day. A subscription's default retention is 7 days.	3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling.
Compliance
SOC 2	Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.	SOC 2 Type II compliant; reports available through the Hatchet Trust Center.
HIPAA	Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.	HIPAA compliant per the security docs; the Scale plan ($1,000/mo) lists audit logs and HIPAA.

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.

Pricing model

Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Three meters: throughput at $40 per TiB counting both publish and subscribe, storage at $0.27 per GiB-month for anything retained beyond a day, and data transfer when throughput crosses a zone or region boundary. Pub/Sub Lite is a separate product priced on reserved capacity rather than usage.
Hatchet: Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$N/mo + usage" at $10 per million task runs, with the plan fee buying users, tenants, retention and throughput rather than volume. Self-hosting is offered with support on the enterprise tier.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Throughput costs for message publishing and delivery [...] Data transfer costs associated with throughput that crosses a Google Cloud zone or region boundary [...] Storage costs associated with retaining messages [...] Pub/Sub Lite throughput and storage charges, by contrast, are based on reserved capacity.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing — Hatchet ↗
“Developer Free + usage $10 per 1M task runs [...] Team $500 /mo + usage [...] SSO Audit logging Bring your own cloud Self-host support Custom SLAs”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Included per month

Google Cloud Pub/Sub: 10 GiB of throughput free per billing account per calendar month, then $40 per TiB. Throughput counts bytes written to a topic plus bytes read from a subscription, so a message published once and read once is billed twice. BigQuery and Cloud Storage subscriptions are $50 per TiB and the 10 GiB does not apply to them; import topics run $50 or $80 per TiB by source.
Hatchet: 100,000 task runs included free, then $10 per million. The cleanest per-unit rate in this category — Hatchet counts task runs where Cloudflare counts 64 KB operations and Inngest counts steps.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“the first 10 GiB of throughput [...] is free. After that, the price is $40 per TiB in all Google Cloud regions. [...] BigQuery subscriptions cost $50 per TiB [...] Import topics (for Cloud Storage, Azure Event Hubs, AWS MSK, or Confluent Cloud) cost $80 per TiB”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing — Hatchet ↗
“Developer Free + usage $10 per 1M task runs First 100,000 runs included”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Message retention

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Retention is configurable and charged rather than granted: $0.27 per GiB-month for messages a topic is configured to retain, for snapshots, and for a subscription's backlog older than one day. A subscription's default retention is 7 days.

Hatchet

3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling.

Sources (2) →

Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Storage costs of $0.27 per GiB-month are charged for the following: A topic is configured to retain messages [...] an attached subscription with message retention duration set to the default of 7 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing — Hatchet ↗
“10 users & 5 tenants 3-day retention 500 RPS throughput”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

SOC 2

Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.
Hatchet: SOC 2 Type II compliant; reports available through the Hatchet Trust Center.

Sources (2) →

SOC 2: compliance — Google Cloud ↗
“Google Cloud regularly undergoes third-party audits for our products, systems, and infrastructure related to this standard. [...] The core Google Cloud and Google Workspace SOC 2 Type II reports are issued quarterly.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
Security - Hatchet Documentation ↗
“Hatchet is SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant. Company-level security practices, compliance reports, and security documentation are available at the Hatchet Trust Center .”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

HIPAA

Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
Hatchet: HIPAA compliant per the security docs; the Scale plan ($1,000/mo) lists audit logs and HIPAA.

Sources (2) →

HIPAA Compliance on Google Cloud ↗
“Covered Products [...] The Google Cloud BAA covers Google Cloud's entire infrastructure [...] and the following products: [...] Pub/Sub [...]”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
Security - Hatchet Documentation ↗
“Hatchet is SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs

Confirm by email; unsubscribe from any issue. Your address goes to Kit and nowhere else — what we do with it.

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.

Entry paid planHatchet: $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month.

RegionsHatchet: 3 live AWS regions (Oregon, N. Virginia, Ireland) plus Sydney in private beta; control plane in aws-us-west-2.

Ingest price per GBGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub: $40 per TiB, which is $0.039 per GiB, for standard publish and subscribe throughput in every Google Cloud region.

Maximum message sizeGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub: Pub/Sub bills on bytes rather than message count; the pricing page states no per-message size ceiling and prices throughput and storage instead.

ConcurrencyHatchet: 500 requests per second of throughput on Team; higher tiers are not published as a number.

ISO 27001Google Cloud Pub/Sub: The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.

GDPR / data residencyHatchet: GDPR compliant per the security docs; EU data plane available in aws-eu-west-1 (Ireland).

PCI DSSGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub: Pub/Sub is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.

Encryption at restHatchet: Data stored in Hatchet Cloud is encrypted at rest; API and worker traffic encrypted with TLS in transit.

Role-based access controlHatchet: Hierarchical tenant roles OWNER, ADMIN, MEMBER, VIEWER plus organization roles; payload visibility can be restricted per member.

Dedicated infrastructureHatchet: Bring-your-own-cloud and self-host support on the Enterprise plan (contact sales).

04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Should I choose Google Cloud Pub/Sub or Hatchet?

Pick Google Cloud Pub/Sub if Google Cloud systems that want messaging without capacity planning — throughput is metered rather than provisioned, and 10 GiB a month costs nothing.

Pick Hatchet if Task workloads that want a countable unit — 100,000 runs free and $10 per million is the least ambiguous pricing in this category.

Provider pages

Google Cloud Pub/SubGoogle Cloud's messaging service, billed per TiB of throughput with message storage charged separately by the GiB-month.HatchetDurable task queue billed per task run, with a free tier, published throughput limits and a self-hosted option.

Related comparisons

Amazon SQS vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub Amazon SQS vs Hatchet Azure Queue Storage vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub Azure Queue Storage vs Hatchet Cloudflare Queues vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub Cloudflare Queues vs Hatchet Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs Inngest Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs Upstash QStash