# Hatchet vs Temporal

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/hatchet-vs-temporal/

Every value below is read from Hatchet's and Temporal's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Hatchet | Temporal |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month. | $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions. |
| Pricing model | Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$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. | Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure. |
| Included per month | 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. | 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category. |
| Message retention | 3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling. | Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Hatchet: $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))
- Temporal: $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

### Pricing model

- 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. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))
- Temporal: Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

### Included per month

- 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. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))
- Temporal: 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

### Message retention

- Hatchet: 3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling. ([source](https://hatchet.run/pricing))
- Temporal: Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks. ([source](https://temporal.io/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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.

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.

Consider something else: 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.

Consider something else: Temporal — Entry is $100 a month before any usage, and the unit is an Action, which does not map onto messages or task runs — budgeting requires modelling your workflows, not counting jobs.

## Documented by only one

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

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Hatchet or Temporal?**

Hatchet: $500/month for Team, which adds users, tenants, retention and throughput on top of usage. Scale is $1,000/month.
Temporal: $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions.

**Should I choose Hatchet or Temporal?**

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.
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.