Hookdeck vs Trigger.dev (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Hookdeck and Trigger.dev share a 2.2 GPA, both have a free plan, and Trigger.dev starts cheaper, at $10 a month against $39 a month.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Hookdeck grades higher on ease of use. Trigger.dev grades higher on value for money. They get the same grade on the free plan, features and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Hookdeck
Gateway for receiving, queueing and routing webhooks
Trigger.dev
Open-source platform for long-running background tasks and AI agents
Which one is for you
Pick Hookdeck if
- Fits if you receive webhooks from Stripe or Shopify and need retries
- Works for developers debugging webhooks on localhost
Look elsewhere if
- Tight if you pass 10,000 events a month on the free plan, as the dashboard locks
- Pricey if you want a static IP, an add-on of $100 a month
- Watch out: a support SLA is an add-on on Team and Growth
- Skip it if you need to send webhooks as well, since Outpost is priced separately
Pick Trigger.dev if
- Fits if you write TypeScript and need jobs that run for minutes or days
- Works for developers building AI agents that must survive crashes
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want a visual builder, as everything is code in your own project
- Tight if you stay free: $5 of credits a month, 10 schedules and 1 day of logs, and tasks stop when the credits are gone
- Pricey if you need more runs, since extra concurrency is $10 a month per 50 and Pro seats beyond 25 are $20 each
- Watch out: compute is billed per second by machine size plus $0.25 per 10,000 runs, so the bill is hard to predict
- Watch out: a HIPAA BAA is a $500 a month add-on
How we grade them
| 2.2GPAHookdeckFair | 2.2GPATrigger.devFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CTeam starts at $39 a month, inside the category's dearer quarter at $49, and Growth is $499. Extra events are metered. | BHobby is $10 a month with $10 of usage credits, which is the edge of the cheapest quarter ($10) in this category. Compute is billed per second on top, and a signed HIPAA BAA is $500 a month extra. |
| Free plan and trial | CDeveloper is free but capped at 10,000 events a month, 1 user and 3-day retention; the dashboard locks past it. | CA free plan with $5 of monthly credits, 20 concurrent runs, 5 team members and 1 day of log retention. When the credits run out, tasks stop. |
| Features | CQueueing, retries and debugging for incoming webhooks. Outpost for sending webhooks is priced separately. | CTasks with no time limit, schedules, queues, webhooks, a dashboard and open-source self-hosting. There's no visual workflow builder, and schedules are capped from 10 on Free to 1,000 on Pro. |
| Ease of use | CNo store rating on record. You point providers at Hookdeck and set up routing. | DNo store rating on record. Tasks are TypeScript in your own codebase, and self-hosting is an option, so you need to be a developer to start. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb dashboard with Slack, Discord, Teams, PagerDuty, Sentry and Datadog connections. | BWeb dashboard, with an API, webhooks, streaming to a frontend through Realtime and a self-hosting guide. |
| Best for | catching and retrying incoming webhooks | running long background jobs in code |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Hookdeck and Trigger.dev. How we grade
Price against what you get
Hookdeck starts at $39 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Trigger.dev starts at $10 a month and scores 2.0.
Hookdeck scores higher, and starts $29 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other automation tools on the chart, 15 score higher than Hookdeck for less, and 10 score higher than Trigger.dev for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Trigger.dev is open source and self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Trigger.dev also covers AI agents.
At a glance
| Hookdeck | Trigger.dev | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $39 per month and up, plus usage beyond 10,000 events | $10 per month (Hobby), with $10 of usage credits included |
| Free plan | Developer plan: $0 a month with up to 10,000 events, 3-day retention and 1 user. | $5 of monthly credits, 20 concurrent runs, 5 team members, 10 schedules, 1 day of log retention and community support. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Hookdeck Technologies Inc. | API Hero Ltd. |
| Price read from | hookdeck.com | trigger.dev |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Hookdeck
- Developer is capped at 10,000 events a month; past that the dashboard locks until you upgrade or the billing period renews.
- Extra events are metered, and the page says pricing falls to as low as $0.33 per 100k at volume.
- A static IP add-on costs $100 a month, and a support SLA is an add-on on Team and Growth.
- Outpost, for sending webhooks, is priced separately from the Event Gateway.
Trigger.dev
- Tasks are written in TypeScript in your own codebase; there is no visual workflow builder.
- Compute is billed per second by machine size, plus $0.25 per 10,000 runs; a Small 1x machine costs $0.0000338 a second.
- A signed HIPAA BAA is a $500 a month add-on on the Hobby and Pro plans.
- The Free plan stops running tasks once its $5 of monthly credits is used up.
Key features
Hookdeck
- Queueing and rate limits
- Inbound requests are always accepted. Delivery above a destination's throughput ceiling is queued, not rejected, within the retention window.
- Connections and transformations
- Connections link sources to destinations, and transformations modify events with custom functions before delivery. Both are unlimited on every plan.
- Issues and metrics
- Issues flag failing events or queue backpressure, and metrics show latency, throughput and error rates. Alerts go to Slack, PagerDuty, Sentry and others.
- Local testing
- A CLI receives and debugs webhooks on localhost, and Inspect previews webhook payloads before they reach your code.
- Outbound delivery
- Outpost, a separate product with its own pricing, handles sending webhooks and events to your own customers.
Trigger.dev
- Tasks with no maximum duration
- Tasks are code that run on managed workers with no set time limit, so a single run can last minutes, days or longer. Waiting on a subtask or a long delay does not count toward compute.
- AI agents and chat
- Agent runs can last minutes or hours and survive crashes. Responses and tool calls can be streamed to a frontend through Realtime, and it works with the Vercel AI SDK.
- Schedules and webhooks
- Cron-style scheduled tasks and verified webhooks start runs. Schedules are capped by plan, from 10 on Free to 1,000 on Pro.
- Concurrency and queues
- Queues control how many runs execute at once. Limits only count while code is running, and extra concurrency on Pro is sold in bundles of 50 for $10 a month.
- Self-hosting
- The platform is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and the vendor publishes a self-hosting guide for running it on your own infrastructure.
- Observability
- Runs are monitored and traced in a dashboard, with billing alerts at set share-of-budget levels. Log retention runs from 1 day on Free to 30 days on Pro.
Plans
Hookdeck
Developer$0
Up to 10,000 events, 3-day retention, 1 user, SOC 2 compliance. The dashboard locks if the event limit is passed.
Team$39
per month and up
Pay-as-you-go events, 7-day retention, unlimited users and alert integrations. Extra events from $0.33 to $1.00 per 100k.
Growth$499
per month and up
Uptime and latency SLAs, 30-day retention, metrics export, SSO, SAML, SCIM and HIPAA compliance.
EnterpriseCustom
Premium support, a support manager, Slack Connect channel, custom security compliance, SLAs and contracts.
Trigger.dev
Free$0
$5 monthly credits, 20 concurrent runs, 5 team members, 10 schedules and 1 day of log retention.
Hobby$10
per month, with $10 of usage credits included
50 concurrent runs, 5 team members, 100 schedules, 7 days of log retention and 3 alert destinations.
Pro$50
per month, with $50 of usage credits included
200+ concurrent runs, 25+ team members ($20 per extra seat), 1,000+ schedules, 30 days of logs and Slack support.
EnterpriseCustom
Everything in Pro plus custom log retention, priority support, role-based access control, SSO and SOC 2 and pen-test reports.
Ways to pay less
Hookdeck
- Startups
Growth plan discounts for eligible startups
The pricing page says eligible startups can get a discount on the Growth plan and should contact Hookdeck for details.
Trigger.dev
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Hookdeck or Trigger.dev?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Trigger.dev is cheaper to start with: $10 a month, against $39 a month for Hookdeck. Hookdeck starts at $39 per month and up, plus usage beyond 10,000 events, and Trigger.dev starts at $10 per month (Hobby), with $10 of usage credits included.
Which has a free plan, Hookdeck or Trigger.dev?
As of Nov 13, 2026, both Hookdeck and Trigger.dev have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.