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Comparison

Spooled vs the alternatives

Feature matrix, pricing overview, and a short honest verdict for each alternative — including the cases where you should pick them instead.

At a glance

6
alternatives
26
features compared

Compared against Inngest, Trigger.dev, QStash, BullMQ, Hatchet and Temporal.

Where Spooled pulls ahead

REST and gRPC, not one or the other

Most queues stop at REST. Spooled adds gRPC with HTTP/2 bidirectional streaming, built to sustain high-throughput workers that claim jobs continuously.

PostgreSQL for truth, Redis for speed

Jobs live in Postgres with atomic transactions and retention; Redis carries only real-time pub/sub. Losing Redis never loses a job.

Incoming webhook ingestion

Dedicated endpoints accept Spooled-formatted JSON from any source; a small adapter handles provider signatures (Stripe, GitHub, Shopify).

Cron at second precision

5- or 6-field cron (leading seconds) can run jobs every 30 seconds if you want — most alternatives stop at one minute.

Live streams without polling

WebSocket and Server-Sent Events push every job transition; Prometheus metrics feed your existing dashboards.

A Rust core you can read

The backend is Apache-2.0 Rust — memory-safe, resource-efficient, and self-hostable on your own Postgres.

Where they differ

19 capabilities with real disagreement. ✓ full support · ~ partial or not clearly documented · — not supported. Temporal is a durable-workflow engine rather than a job queue, so it sits outside this grid — see its verdict below.

Capability Spooled Inngest
  • REST API Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • gRPC API Spooled: Yes Inngest: No
  • Job Priorities Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • 6-Field Cron (Seconds) Spooled: Yes Inngest: No
  • Idempotency / Deduplication Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Workflows / DAGs Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Incoming Webhooks Spooled: Yes Inngest: Partial
  • Outgoing Webhooks Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • WebSocket Updates Spooled: Yes Inngest: Partial
  • SSE Updates Spooled: Yes Inngest: Partial
  • Worker Registration Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Concurrency Controls Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Job Tags & Filtering Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Queue Pause/Resume Spooled: Yes Inngest: Partial
  • Prometheus Metrics Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Built-in Dashboard Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • Self-Hosted Option Spooled: Yes Inngest: Yes
  • PostgreSQL Data Plane Spooled: Yes Inngest: Partial
  • Open Source (core) Spooled: Yes Inngest: Partial

Full support on 18 of 26 rows (incl. table stakes).

Table stakes — every tool has these (7)

Full support across Spooled, Inngest, Trigger.dev, QStash, BullMQ, and Hatchet — shown here so they stop burying the rows that differ.

  • Bulk Enqueue
  • Delayed/Scheduled Jobs
  • Cron Scheduling
  • Automatic Retries
  • Dead-Letter Queue
  • Rate Limiting
  • Official SDKs (TS, Python, Go, PHP)

Our own read of public docs, last reviewed 2026-07-16 — not an independent benchmark, and we're biased. Spooled bulk enqueue up to 100 jobs/request; list page sizes up to 100. If a row is wrong, open an issue.

Pricing at a glance

Spooled's numbers come from the pricing and limits pages. Everyone else is badge-only — free tier and model — so we don't fake precision we don't have.

Free tier badge, pricing model, and vendor link per service
Service Free tier Model Vendor
Spooled Cloud 1,000 jobs/day · Starter $19 USD/mo (10,000/day) · Pro $49 USD/mo (100,000/day) Yes Flat Pricing ↗
Inngest Yes Usage-based Site ↗
Trigger.dev Self-host only Usage-based Site ↗
QStash Yes Usage-based Site ↗
Hatchet Self-host only Usage-based Site ↗
Temporal Cloud None Usage-based Site ↗
BullMQ (self-hosted) Self-host only Infra only Site ↗

Self-host only means you operate the infrastructure yourself (Redis or PostgreSQL, servers, monitoring). Infra only means there is no vendor cloud bill — just your own.

The honest verdicts

Two sentences you can quote, then the trade-offs in both directions.

Spooled vs BullMQ #

BullMQ is an excellent Redis-backed library if you work in Node.js and are happy operating Redis yourself. Spooled trades that for a language-agnostic service: REST + gRPC APIs, PostgreSQL durability, a built-in dashboard, webhooks, and official SDKs in four languages, plus a managed cloud when you don't want to run anything.

Spooled wins

  • + HTTP APIs — BullMQ is library-only, Spooled speaks REST + gRPC
  • + Postgres durability instead of Redis persistence tuning
  • + Incoming and outgoing webhooks
  • + Built-in dashboard and DLQ tooling
  • + Node.js, Python, Go, and PHP SDKs

BullMQ wins

  • – Free to self-host with only Redis infra costs
  • – Direct library integration for existing Node.js + Redis stacks
  • – Larger ecosystem and community
Full Spooled vs BullMQ comparison

Spooled vs Inngest #

Inngest offers a polished event-driven model and a more established ecosystem. Spooled counters with a gRPC streaming API, dedicated incoming-webhook ingestion, per-queue pause/resume, and a fully open Apache-2.0 core that self-hosts on plain PostgreSQL.

Spooled wins

  • + gRPC streaming for high-throughput workers
  • + Dedicated incoming-webhook ingestion endpoints
  • + Queue pause/resume without losing jobs
  • + PostgreSQL data plane with SQL-queryable state
  • + Fully open-source core (Apache-2.0)

Inngest wins

  • – More established ecosystem and integrations
  • – Richer event-driven function model
Full Spooled vs Inngest comparison

Spooled vs Trigger.dev #

Trigger.dev excels at long-running, code-first background tasks in TypeScript, including human-in-the-loop steps. Spooled is a leaner queue service: second-precision cron, a Postgres + Redis architecture, per-queue controls, and a protocol-first API usable from any language.

Spooled wins

  • + 5- or 6-field cron with second precision
  • + Incoming webhook ingestion endpoints
  • + Queue pause/resume and priority boosts
  • + Language-agnostic REST + gRPC surface

Trigger.dev wins

  • – Very long-running tasks without timeout pressure
  • – Human-in-the-loop workflow features
  • – Deep TypeScript developer experience
Full Spooled vs Trigger.dev comparison

Spooled vs QStash #

QStash is a lightweight HTTP message queue that shines for serverless fan-out with minimal setup. Spooled adds worker registration, workflows, job priorities, WebSocket/SSE streams, Prometheus metrics, and a self-host option QStash does not offer.

Spooled wins

  • + Worker registration and claim semantics
  • + Workflows with dependencies
  • + Job priorities and queue controls
  • + WebSocket/SSE streams and Prometheus metrics
  • + Self-hostable open-source core

QStash wins

  • – Zero-infrastructure push model for serverless endpoints
  • – Very low setup cost for simple fan-out
Full Spooled vs QStash comparison

Spooled vs Hatchet #

Hatchet shares Spooled's Postgres-first philosophy and brings strong DAG tooling. Spooled differentiates with dedicated incoming-webhook endpoints, second-precision cron, and a smaller API surface that gets a first job running in minutes.

Spooled wins

  • + Incoming webhook ingestion endpoints
  • + 5- or 6-field cron with second precision
  • + Simpler onboarding for plain background jobs

Hatchet wins

  • – More elaborate DAG/workflow tooling
  • – Deeper concurrency-fairness features
Full Spooled vs Hatchet comparison

Spooled vs Temporal #

Temporal is the heavyweight choice for deterministic, weeks-long workflow orchestration with replay and audit guarantees. Spooled covers the far more common case — background jobs, retries, cron, and simple workflows — without deterministic-code constraints or a dedicated cluster to operate.

Spooled wins

  • + No deterministic programming model to learn
  • + First job in minutes; no cluster to run
  • + Flat, published pricing with a free tier

Temporal wins

  • – Weeks-long, replayable, mission-critical workflows
  • – Workflow versioning, replay, and debugging tooling
  • – Battle-tested at very large enterprises
Full Spooled vs Temporal comparison
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