Hatchet vs Temporal
A comparison of Hatchet and Temporal built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- 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.
4 sourced criteria separate them:
- Entry paid plan
- 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 $500/month with 2.5 million Actions.
- Pricing model
- Hatchet: Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Message retention
- Hatchet: 3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling.
- 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.
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.
Hatchet 0
Temporal 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Hatchet | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| 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. |
| Queues | ||
| 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Hatchet ↗
“Team $500 /mo + usage Everything in Developer, plus: 10 users & 5 tenants 3-day retention 500 RPS throughput [...] Scale $1,000 /mo + usage”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“Essentials Starting at $100/mo. [...] 1 M Actions 1 GB Active Storage 40 GB Retained Storage [...] Business Starting at $500/mo. [...] 2.5 M Actions 2.5 GB Act”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Hatchet
- Usage-first: every plan is "free + usage" or "$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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“Cloud platform 99.9% SLA, 99.99% HA options [...] Essentials support with 1 business day P0 response time [...] Host It Yourself Open Source Temporal Self-Hosted [...] Temporal Service Temporal SDKs Temporal CLI Temporal UI Community Support”
Read 2026-09-06 · official 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Hatchet ↗
“Developer Free + usage $10 per 1M task runs First 100,000 runs included”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“Essentials Starting at $100/mo. [...] 1 M Actions 1 GB Active Storage 40 GB Retained Storage [...] Business [...] 2.5 M Actions 2.5 GB Active Storage”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Message retention
- Hatchet
- 3 days on the Team plan, stated alongside a 500 requests-per-second throughput ceiling.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Hatchet ↗
“10 users & 5 tenants 3-day retention 500 RPS throughput”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“EVENT HISTORY AND RETENTION Storage Temporal stores workflow event history as Active storage for open workflows and Retained Storage for closed workflows [...] 1 GB Active Storage 40 GB Retained Storage”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Which should you choose?
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
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…
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.