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Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs Temporal

SEPT 2026 audit

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

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 27 criteria comparedSources last checked

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 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…

  • 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.
  • 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: Google Cloud Pub/Sub alternatives · Temporal alternatives

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

Visit Google Cloud Pub/Sub documentationVisit Temporal 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.

CriterionGoogle Cloud Pub/SubTemporal
Pricing
Free tier
Yes
No
Kind of free offerFree tierFree credit
Pricing modelThree 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.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
99.95% or better for Pub/Sub. Pub/Sub Lite is 99.95% for regional topics and 99.5% for zonal topics. Published as an SLO.
99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options.
Queues
Included per month10 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.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 sizePub/Sub bills on bytes rather than message count; the pricing page states no per-message size ceiling and prices throughput and storage instead.2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable.
Message retentionRetention 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.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.
Compliance
SOC 2Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges.
ISO 27001
The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
ISMS is informed by the NIST Cybersecurity Framework; the DPA's certification/assurance measure names only third-party SOC 2 Type II audits. Adjacent evidence: the DPA claims no ISO 27001 certificate, but no Temporal page explicitly denies one.
HIPAAPub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.Temporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications.
PCI DSS
Pub/Sub is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.
Terms of Service bar customers from submitting payment card information to the Hosted Services; only contact name, title and email address are permitted. Clause 1.6 Personal Data; a contractual data restriction, not a statement about PCI DSS certification.

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.

Free tier

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Yes
Temporal
No
Sources (2) →

Kind of free offer

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Free tier
Temporal
Free credit
Sources (2) →

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.
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) →
  • 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 · 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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

99.95% or better for Pub/Sub. Pub/Sub Lite is 99.95% for regional topics and 99.5% for zonal topics. Published as an SLO.

Temporal

99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options.

Sources (2) →

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.
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) →
  • 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 · 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

Google 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.
Temporal
2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable.
Sources (2) →

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.
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) →
  • 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 · 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

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.
Temporal
SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges.
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 · Report a correction

  • Security | Temporal ↗

    “Compliance Temporal Cloud is SOC 2 Type II certified, and compliant with GDPR and HIPAA regulations.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

ISO 27001

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
Temporal
ISMS is informed by the NIST Cybersecurity Framework; the DPA's certification/assurance measure names only third-party SOC 2 Type II audits. Adjacent evidence: the DPA claims no ISO 27001 certificate, but no Temporal page explicitly denies one.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
Temporal
Temporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications.
Sources (2) →

PCI DSS

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.
Temporal
Terms of Service bar customers from submitting payment card information to the Hosted Services; only contact name, title and email address are permitted. Clause 1.6 Personal Data; a contractual data restriction, not a statement about PCI DSS certification.
Sources (2) →
  • PCI DSS - Compliance — Google Cloud ↗

    “Google Cloud undergoes at least an annual third-party audit to certify individual products against the PCI DSS.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

  • Terms of Service - April 2025 | Temporal Technologies ↗

    “Except for contact information consisting of first and last name, title and email address for which Customer has obtained necessary rights of access and use from the individual, Customer agrees not to submit other personal data or any sensitive personal information (including government issued identification numbers, financial account information, payment card information, and personal health information) to Temporal.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

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.

What the free plan includesGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub: The first 10 GiB of Message Delivery Basic throughput per billing account each calendar month.
Credit card to startTemporal: Yes — Card required to sign up for Temporal Cloud; not charged in the first 90 days while credits remain.
Entry paid planTemporal: No plan fee or minimum: pay-as-you-go has no base monthly fee and bills usage from $50 per million Actions, plus storage and Developer support at 10% of usage. New accounts start with $150 in credits valid for 90 days. The Business support add-on starts at $500/month.
Startup credit programTemporal: Temporal Cloud startup credits: $6,000, for funded startups that have raised $30M or less.
RegionsTemporal: 20 regions for Temporal Cloud Namespaces: 14 AWS regions and 6 Google Cloud regions, each with a PrivateLink or Private Service Connect endpoint.
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 delayTemporal: Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud.
ConcurrencyTemporal: 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.
Support on entry paid planTemporal: Developer support comes with pay-as-you-go and is billed at 10% of usage. The Business support add-on, the greater of $500/month or 10% of usage, adds advanced technical support with a 2-hour P0 SLA in business hours.
Response time commitmentTemporal: P0 response: 1 business day on Developer (the pay-as-you-go support level), 2 business hours on Business, 30 minutes on Enterprise and 15 minutes on Mission Critical. No comparable number, because a business day is not a fixed span.
GDPR / data residencyTemporal: GDPR compliant with a DPA reflecting GDPR; Namespaces do not share data processing or storage across regional boundaries.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Encryption at restTemporal: Persistence layer and Elasticsearch index encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; TLS 1.3 in transit.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Customer-managed keysTemporal: Client-side Data Converter encrypts payloads with your keys on your Workers before they reach Temporal Cloud, which cannot decrypt them; no server-side KMS option stated.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Role-based access controlTemporal: Predefined account-level roles (Account Owner, Global Admin, Developer, Finance Admin, Read-Only) plus Namespace-level permissions (Admin, Write, Read-Only), with optional Custom Roles for granular access.
Private networking / VPCTemporal: AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect to Namespaces, alongside the default public endpoints.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Dedicated infrastructureTemporal: Temporal Cloud is a multi-tenant service; Namespaces are logically segregated and do not share data processing or data storage across regional boundaries. No single-tenant or dedicated-cell option is offered anywhere in the Cloud docs or the plan matrix.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Free tier: Google Cloud Pub/Sub or Temporal?

Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Yes

Temporal: No

Should I choose Google Cloud Pub/Sub or Temporal?

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 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.

Provider pages

Google Cloud Pub/SubGoogle Cloud's messaging service, billed per TiB of throughput with message storage charged separately by the GiB-month.TemporalDurable execution platform metered in Actions, with storage split between open and closed workflows, and a self-hosted open-source edition.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.