# Upstash QStash

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/queues/qstash/

HTTP-based message queue and scheduler, priced per message with a per-day cap rather than a monthly allowance.

## Who it suits

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

Consider something else if 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.

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)
- Pricing model: 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. ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)

### Queues

- Included per month: 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. ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)
- Maximum message size: 1 MB on the free plan, 10 MB on Pay as You Go and 50 MB on the fixed plans. ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)
- 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. ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)
- Maximum delay: 7 days on the free plan; 1 year on Pay as You Go and unlimited on the fixed plans. ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)
- Dead letter queue: Supported ([source](https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash), read 2026-09-06)

## Compared with

- [Upstash QStash vs Cloudflare Queues](https://inetgeek.com/compare/cloudflare-queues-vs-qstash/)
- [Upstash QStash vs Inngest](https://inetgeek.com/compare/qstash-vs-inngest/)
- [Upstash QStash vs Trigger.dev](https://inetgeek.com/compare/qstash-vs-trigger-dev/)