Temporal vs Zeplo
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Temporal and Zeplo built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
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 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- 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.
- 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.
8 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
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.
Temporal 0
Zeplo 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Temporal | Zeplo |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $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. | $39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each. |
| Pricing model | 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. | 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. |
| 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. | Hosted on Google Cloud Platform; no selectable region is offered and data may be transferred between countries. |
| Queues | ||
| Included per month | 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. | 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 | 2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable. | 256 KB inline request body (unlimited via S3 offload); plan payload caps are 64 KB on Developer and 1 MB on Company. |
| Message retention | 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. | 30 days of log retention on every plan — free, Company and Enterprise alike. The longest window in this category by a wide margin. |
| Maximum delay | Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud. | 30 days (2,592,000 seconds) maximum delay_seconds per request. |
| Concurrency | 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. | API rate limit rather than a concurrency figure: 100 requests/min on Developer (Free) and 2,000 requests/min on Company ($39/mo). |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- 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.
- Zeplo
- $39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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 — Zeplo ↗
“Company [...] $39 /month 1M requests included $10 / million requests Team size: 3 users [...] Addition team members $15 $15 $15”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing model
- 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Zeplo ↗
“Jobs Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Included team members 1 3 Custom Addition team members $15 $15 $15 Log retention 30 days 30 days 30 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
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.
- Zeplo
- Hosted on Google Cloud Platform; no selectable region is offered and data may be transferred between countries.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Service regions - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“Temporal Cloud operates in the following Amazon Web Services (AWS) regions: Asia Pacific - Tokyo ( ap-northeast-1 ) [...] Temporal Cloud operates the following Google Cloud (GCP) regions: North America - Iowa ( us-central1 )”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
- Privacy Policy - Zeplo ↗
“Zeplo currently uses the following services to store your information: Google Cloud Platform Cross-border data transfers Information that Zeplo collects may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site
Included per month
- 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Zeplo ↗
“Free 500 requests included $20 / 100k requests [...] $39 /month 1M requests included $10 / million requests”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Maximum message size
2 MB maximum payload per request (each Workflow/Activity argument or return value); 4 MB per Event History transaction, non-configurable.
256 KB inline request body (unlimited via S3 offload); plan payload caps are 64 KB on Developer and 1 MB on Company.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Limits - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“The max payload for a single request is 2 MB. The max size limit for any given Event History transaction is 4 MB. This limit is non-configurable for Temporal Cloud.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
- Limits - Zeplo docs ↗
“Maximum request body size 256KB inline, unlimited via S3 offload [...] Max payload 64KB 1MB”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
Message retention
- 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.
- Zeplo
- 30 days of log retention on every plan — free, Company and Enterprise alike. The longest window in this category by a wide margin.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Zeplo ↗
“Log retention 30 days 30 days 30 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Maximum delay
- Temporal
- Timers (durable sleeps) may run up to 100 years in Temporal Cloud.
- Zeplo
- 30 days (2,592,000 seconds) maximum delay_seconds per request.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Limits - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“Timer duration limit Timers have a maximum duration of 100 years in Temporal Cloud.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
- Limits - Zeplo docs ↗
“Maximum delay_seconds 2,592,000 (30 days)”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
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.
- Zeplo
- API rate limit rather than a concurrency figure: 100 requests/min on Developer (Free) and 2,000 requests/min on Company ($39/mo).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Limits - Temporal Cloud | Temporal Documentation ↗
“Actions per second Scope: Namespace Default limit: 500 actions per second (APS). [...] Temporal Cloud limits each Namespace to 20,000 Activity pollers and 20,000 Workflow Task pollers concurrently.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
- Limits - Zeplo docs ↗
“Plan API rate limit Developer (Free) 100 requests/min Company ($39/mo) 2,000 requests/min”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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: Temporal or Zeplo?
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.
Zeplo: $39/month for Company, including 1,000,000 requests and three team members. Additional members are $15 each.
Should I choose Temporal or Zeplo?
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 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.