# Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs Zeplo

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/google-pubsub-vs-zeplo/

Every value below is read from Google Cloud Pub/Sub's and Zeplo's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Google Cloud Pub/Sub | Zeplo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 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. | Per HTTP request rather than per message or per execution, with unlimited jobs on every tier and team size as a separate axis — three members included on Company, $15 for each beyond. |
| 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. | 500 requests free, then $20 per 100,000. The Company plan includes 1,000,000 requests and charges $10 per million beyond — five times cheaper per request than the free plan's overage rate. |
| Maximum message size | Pub/Sub bills on bytes rather than message count; the pricing page states no per-message size ceiling and prices throughput and storage instead. | 256 KB inline request body (unlimited via S3 offload); plan payload caps are 64 KB on Developer and 1 MB on Company. |
| 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. | 30 days of log retention on every plan — free, Company and Enterprise alike. The longest window in this category by a wide margin. |

## 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. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/pricing))
- Zeplo: Per HTTP request rather than per message or per execution, with unlimited jobs on every tier and team size as a separate axis — three members included on Company, $15 for each beyond. ([source](https://www.zeplo.io/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. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/pricing))
- Zeplo: 500 requests free, then $20 per 100,000. The Company plan includes 1,000,000 requests and charges $10 per million beyond — five times cheaper per request than the free plan's overage rate. ([source](https://www.zeplo.io/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/pricing))
- Zeplo: 256 KB inline request body (unlimited via S3 offload); plan payload caps are 64 KB on Developer and 1 MB on Company. ([source](https://zeplo.io/docs/limits/))

### 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. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/pricing))
- Zeplo: 30 days of log retention on every plan — free, Company and Enterprise alike. The longest window in this category by a wide margin. ([source](https://www.zeplo.io/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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 Zeplo if Turning an HTTP endpoint into a queued, retried job without running a consumer — and keeping a month of logs while doing it, which nothing else here offers on a free plan.

Consider something else: 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.

Consider something else: Zeplo — The free tier's overage is $20 per 100,000 requests, twenty times the Company plan's rate, so staying free past 500 requests is the most expensive way to use it.

## Documented by only one

- Entry paid plan: Zeplo: $39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each.
- Regions: Zeplo: Hosted on Google Cloud Platform; no selectable region is offered and data may be transferred between countries.
- Ingest price per GB: Google Cloud Pub/Sub: $40 per TiB, which is $0.039 per GiB, for standard publish and subscribe throughput in every Google Cloud region.
- Maximum delay: Zeplo: 30 days (2,592,000 seconds) maximum delay_seconds per request.
- Concurrency: Zeplo: API rate limit rather than a concurrency figure: 100 requests/min on Developer (Free) and 2,000 requests/min on Company ($39/mo).
- 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.
- ISO 27001: Google Cloud Pub/Sub: The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
- HIPAA: Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
- 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.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Google Cloud Pub/Sub or Zeplo?**

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 Zeplo if Turning an HTTP endpoint into a queued, retried job without running a consumer — and keeping a month of logs while doing it, which nothing else here offers on a free plan.