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Upstash QStash vs Amazon SQS

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Upstash QStash and Amazon SQS built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 22 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Upstash QStash if…

HTTP-first workloads that want scheduling and delay measured in months rather than a day, without running a consumer process.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Amazon SQS if…

AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Upstash QStash: The free plan is capped per day rather than per month, so a single burst can exhaust it while a monthly allowance elsewhere would absorb the same volume.
  • Amazon SQS: Billing is per request rather than per message, and a 1 MiB payload counts as sixteen, so chatty polling or large messages cost far more than the message count suggests.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Upstash QStash alternatives · Amazon SQS alternatives

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

Visit Upstash QStash documentationVisit Amazon SQS 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.

CriterionUpstash QStashAmazon SQS
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree tierFree tier
Pricing modelPer message rather than per operation, metered against a daily ceiling on the free plan and priced at $1 per 100,000 on Pay as You Go, with monthly bandwidth caps alongside — 50 GB on the smaller plans, 1 TB and 5 TB above.Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.
Queues
Included per month1,000 messages a day on the free plan. Pay as You Go is $1 per 100,000 messages with no daily cap; fixed plans run $180 a month for 1M a day and $420 for 10M.1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion.
Maximum message size
1 MB on the free plan, 10 MB on Pay as You Go and 50 MB on the fixed plans.
256 KB per message. A single request carries 1 to 10 messages up to 1 MiB total, and each 64 KB chunk of payload is billed as one request.
Message retention
Dead letter queue retention of 3 days on the free plan, 7 days on Pay as You Go, 30 days and 3 months on the fixed plans.
4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.
Maximum delay7 days on the free plan; 1 year on Pay as You Go and unlimited on the fixed plans.15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
Dead letter queueSupportedSupported

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

Upstash QStash
Per message rather than per operation, metered against a daily ceiling on the free plan and priced at $1 per 100,000 on Pay as You Go, with monthly bandwidth caps alongside — 50 GB on the smaller plans, 1 TB and 5 TB above.
Amazon SQS
Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.
Sources (2) →

Included per month

Upstash QStash
1,000 messages a day on the free plan. Pay as You Go is $1 per 100,000 messages with no daily cap; fixed plans run $180 a month for 1M a day and $420 for 10M.
Amazon SQS
1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion.
Sources (2) →

Maximum message size

Upstash QStash

1 MB on the free plan, 10 MB on Pay as You Go and 50 MB on the fixed plans.

Amazon SQS

256 KB per message. A single request carries 1 to 10 messages up to 1 MiB total, and each 64 KB chunk of payload is billed as one request.

Sources (2) →

Message retention

Upstash QStash

Dead letter queue retention of 3 days on the free plan, 7 days on Pay as You Go, 30 days and 3 months on the fixed plans.

Amazon SQS

4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.

Sources (2) →

Maximum delay

Upstash QStash
7 days on the free plan; 1 year on Pay as You Go and unlimited on the fixed plans.
Amazon SQS
15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
Sources (2) →

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 includesUpstash QStash: 1,000 messages a day.
Entry paid planAmazon SQS: No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.
RegionsAmazon SQS: 34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table.
Uptime SLAAmazon SQS: 99.9% monthly uptime per AWS Region, one figure with no configuration split.
ConcurrencyAmazon SQS: Approximately 120,000 in-flight messages per standard queue (received but not yet deleted); API call rate on standard queues is nearly unlimited.
SOC 2Amazon SQS: Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
ISO 27001Amazon SQS: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
HIPAAAmazon SQS: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
GDPR / data residencyAmazon SQS: AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
PCI DSSAmazon SQS: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Encryption at restAmazon SQS: Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).
Customer-managed keysAmazon SQS: Supported via SSE-KMS: queues can use a customer managed KMS key created and policy-controlled in AWS KMS.
Role-based access controlAmazon SQS: IAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions.
Private networking / VPCAmazon SQS: Interface VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) let a VPC reach SQS privately, including FIPS endpoints; HTTPS endpoints only.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Should I choose Upstash QStash or Amazon SQS?

Pick Upstash QStash if HTTP-first workloads that want scheduling and delay measured in months rather than a day, without running a consumer process.

Pick Amazon SQS if AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.

Provider pages

Upstash QStashHTTP-based message queue and scheduler, priced per message with a per-day cap rather than a monthly allowance.Amazon SQSAWS managed message queue, billed per request with standard and FIFO rates and a permanent free tier.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.