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Temporal vs Trigger.dev

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Temporal and Trigger.dev built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 26 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

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

Choose Trigger.dev if…

Teams that want background jobs written as normal code with the bill expressed as compute credits rather than a per-message meter.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • 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.
  • Trigger.dev: Concurrency is the axis that forces an upgrade — 20 simultaneous runs on free, 50 on Hobby, then $10 a month per additional 50.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Temporal alternatives · Trigger.dev alternatives

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

Visit Temporal documentationVisit Trigger.dev 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.

CriterionTemporalTrigger.dev
Pricing
Free tier
No
Yes
Kind of free offerFree creditFree tier
Entry paid planNo 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.$10/month for Hobby, which includes $10 of credits; Pro is $50/month including $50 of credits.
Pricing modelPay-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.A monthly plan fee that is also a credit balance — the fee buys compute rather than sitting on top of it — with concurrency, preview branches, dashboards and schedules each priced as separate add-ons beyond the plan's allowance.
Infrastructure
Regions
20 regions for Temporal Cloud Namespaces: 14 AWS regions and 6 Google Cloud regions, each with a PrivateLink or Private Service Connect endpoint.
Three AWS regions for running tasks: us-east-1 (US East, Virginia), us-west-2 (US West, Oregon) and eu-central-1 (Europe, Frankfurt). Changelog dated July 13, 2026; region set per project or per run on the dashboard Regions page.
Queues
Included per monthNo 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.Credits rather than a message or execution count: $5 a month free, $10 included on Hobby and $50 on Pro, spent against compute.
Maximum message size
2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable.
3 MB per trigger payload (each batch item up to 3 MB on SDK 4.3.1+); task outputs up to 10 MB; payloads over 512 KB offloaded to object storage.
Message retentionClosed 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.Log retention of 1 day on the free plan, 7 days on Hobby and 30 days on Pro, with the query period matching.
Concurrency500 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.20 concurrent runs on the free plan, 50 on Hobby, and more on Pro at $10 a month per additional 50.
Support
Support on entry paid plan
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.
Community support on the $5 and $10 plans; dedicated Slack support on Pro ($50/month); priority support on Enterprise.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges.SOC 2 Type II compliant; latest report available on request for Enterprise customers.
HIPAATemporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications.Meets HIPAA Business Associate requirements; a signed BAA is a paid add-on for running PHI workloads on Trigger.dev Cloud.
GDPR / data residencyGDPR compliant with a DPA reflecting GDPR; Namespaces do not share data processing or storage across regional boundaries.Stated GDPR compliant; DPA forms part of the Terms of Service automatically on sign-up.
Encryption at restPersistence layer and Elasticsearch index encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; TLS 1.3 in transit.Data encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with HTTPS/TLS.
Role-based access controlPredefined 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.Role-based access control (RBAC) and SSO listed as Enterprise plan features.
Private networking / VPCAWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect to Namespaces, alongside the default public endpoints.AWS PrivateLink to resources in your own AWS VPC; a Pro and Enterprise feature enabled on request.
Dedicated infrastructureTemporal 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.Cloud is fully managed; the docs route teams with data residency, compliance or infrastructure-control requirements to self-hosting instead.

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

Temporal
No
Trigger.dev
Yes
Sources (2) →

Kind of free offer

Temporal
Free credit
Trigger.dev
Free tier
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

Temporal
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.
Trigger.dev
$10/month for Hobby, which includes $10 of credits; Pro is $50/month including $50 of credits.
Sources (2) →
  • Temporal Platform Pricing Options | Temporal ↗

    “No commitment. No minimums. [...] Pay-As-You-Go Starting at $50 per million actions Get started for free Free $150 credits for 90 days No base monthly fee $0.042/GBhr Active Storage $0.00105/GBhr Retained Storage Developer support for 10% of usage [...] Business Starting at $500/month”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Trigger.dev ↗

    “Hobby $10/month [...] $10 / month credits included [...] Pro $50/month [...] $50 / month credits included”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

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.
Trigger.dev
A monthly plan fee that is also a credit balance — the fee buys compute rather than sitting on top of it — with concurrency, preview branches, dashboards and schedules each priced as separate add-ons beyond the plan's allowance.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Pricing — Trigger.dev ↗

    “$10 / month credits included [...] Then $10/month per 50 [...] Then $20/month per seat [...] Then $10/month per branch [...] Then $10/month per 1,000”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Temporal

20 regions for Temporal Cloud Namespaces: 14 AWS regions and 6 Google Cloud regions, each with a PrivateLink or Private Service Connect endpoint.

Trigger.dev

Three AWS regions for running tasks: us-east-1 (US East, Virginia), us-west-2 (US West, Oregon) and eu-central-1 (Europe, Frankfurt). Changelog dated July 13, 2026; region set per project or per run on the dashboard Regions page.

Sources (2) →

Included per month

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.
Trigger.dev
Credits rather than a message or execution count: $5 a month free, $10 included on Hobby and $50 on Pro, spent against compute.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Pricing — Trigger.dev ↗

    “$5 / month free credits [...] $10 / month credits included [...] $50 / month credits included”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Maximum message size

Temporal

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

Trigger.dev

3 MB per trigger payload (each batch item up to 3 MB on SDK 4.3.1+); task outputs up to 10 MB; payloads over 512 KB offloaded to object storage.

Sources (2) →

Message retention

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.
Trigger.dev
Log retention of 1 day on the free plan, 7 days on Hobby and 30 days on Pro, with the query period matching.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Pricing — Trigger.dev ↗

    “1 day log retention 1 day query period [...] 7 day log retention 7 days query period [...] 30 day log retention”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Concurrency

Temporal
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.
Trigger.dev
20 concurrent runs on the free plan, 50 on Hobby, and more on Pro at $10 a month per additional 50.
Sources (2) →

Support on entry paid plan

Temporal
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.
Trigger.dev
Community support on the $5 and $10 plans; dedicated Slack support on Pro ($50/month); priority support on Enterprise.
Sources (2) →
  • Temporal Platform Pricing Options | Temporal ↗

    “Developer support for 10% of usage [...] Business Starting at $500/month Contact Sales 2 Hour P0 SLA Business Hours Advanced Technical Support Price: Greater of $500/mo or 10% of usage”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Trigger.dev Pricing ↗

    “1 day query period community support 1 alert destination [...] 30 days query period dedicated slack support 100 + alert destinations [...] custom log retention priority support role-based access control (rbac)”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

SOC 2

Temporal
SOC 2 Type II certified; trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA badges.
Trigger.dev
SOC 2 Type II compliant; latest report available on request for Enterprise customers.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Security | Trigger.dev ↗

    “Yes, Trigger.dev is SOC 2 Type II compliant. Visit our Security Portal for more information. Our latest report is available upon request for our Enterprise customers.”

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

HIPAA

Temporal
Temporal Cloud is stated to be compliant with HIPAA regulations; HIPAA listed among trust-center certifications.
Trigger.dev
Meets HIPAA Business Associate requirements; a signed BAA is a paid add-on for running PHI workloads on Trigger.dev Cloud.
Sources (2) →
  • Security | Temporal ↗

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

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

  • Security | Trigger.dev ↗

    “Yes. Trigger.dev meets HIPAA Business Associate requirements. To run tasks that process PHI on Trigger.dev Cloud you'll need a signed BAA with us, which is available as a paid add-on.”

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

GDPR / data residency

Temporal
GDPR compliant with a DPA reflecting GDPR; Namespaces do not share data processing or storage across regional boundaries.
Trigger.dev
Stated GDPR compliant; DPA forms part of the Terms of Service automatically on sign-up.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Temporal
Persistence layer and Elasticsearch index encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM; TLS 1.3 in transit.
Trigger.dev
Data encrypted at rest with AES-256 and in transit with HTTPS/TLS.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Temporal
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.
Trigger.dev
Role-based access control (RBAC) and SSO listed as Enterprise plan features.
Sources (2) →
  • Roles and permissions | Temporal Documentation ↗

    “Some account-level roles, such as Account Owner and Global Admin, automatically have Namespace Admin permissions on all Namespaces in the account. [...] For more granular access control, you can also use Custom Roles to define specific permissions for specific Temporal Cloud resources and assign them to any principal. [...] You can grant Namespace Admin, Write, or Read-Only permissions to principals with the account-level roles of Developer, Finance Admin, or Read-Only.”

    Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Pricing | Trigger.dev ↗

    “All Pro plan features + Custom log retention Priority support Role-based access control (RBAC) SOC 2 report Penetration test report Single sign-on (SSO)”

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

Private networking / VPC

Temporal
AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect to Namespaces, alongside the default public endpoints.
Trigger.dev
AWS PrivateLink to resources in your own AWS VPC; a Pro and Enterprise feature enabled on request.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Temporal
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.
Trigger.dev
Cloud is fully managed; the docs route teams with data residency, compliance or infrastructure-control requirements to self-hosting instead.
Sources (2) →
  • Security model - Temporal Cloud ↗

    “Temporal Cloud is a multi-tenant service. Namespaces in the same environment are logically segregated. Namespaces do not share data processing or data storage across regional boundaries.”

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

  • Self-hosting overview - Trigger.dev ↗

    “Trigger.dev Cloud is fully managed, scalable, and comes with dedicated support. [...] if you have specific requirements around data residency, compliance, or infrastructure control, self-hosting may be the right choice for you.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · 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 includesTrigger.dev: $5 of credit each month with 20 concurrent runs and one day of log retention.
Credit card to startTemporal: Yes — Card required to sign up for Temporal Cloud; not charged in the first 90 days while credits remain.
Startup credit programTemporal: Temporal Cloud startup credits: $6,000, for funded startups that have raised $30M or less.
Uptime SLATemporal: 99.9% on the pay-as-you-go Temporal Cloud plan (no base fee), with 99.99% High Availability options.
Maximum delayTemporal: Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud.
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.
ISO 27001Temporal: 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.Trigger.dev: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-22 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Trigger.dev.
PCI DSSTemporal: 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.Trigger.dev: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-22 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Trigger.dev.
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.Trigger.dev: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-22 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Trigger.dev.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Temporal or Trigger.dev?

Temporal: 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.

Trigger.dev: $10/month for Hobby, which includes $10 of credits; Pro is $50/month including $50 of credits.

Free tier: Temporal or Trigger.dev?

Temporal: No

Trigger.dev: Yes

Should I choose Temporal or Trigger.dev?

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.

Pick Trigger.dev if Teams that want background jobs written as normal code with the bill expressed as compute credits rather than a per-message meter.

Provider pages

TemporalDurable execution platform metered in Actions, with storage split between open and closed workflows, and a self-hosted open-source edition.Trigger.devBackground jobs platform billed as monthly credits against compute, with plan tiers set by concurrent runs.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.