Restate vs Trigger.dev (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Trigger.dev grades higher than Restate: 2.2 against 2.0 out of 4.0.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Restate grades higher on the free plan. Trigger.dev grades higher on value for money and platforms. They get the same grade on features and ease of use.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Restate
Durable execution runtime for backends and AI agents
Trigger.dev
Open-source platform for long-running background tasks and AI agents
Which one is for you
Pick Restate if
- Fits if you're a backend team who need workflows to survive restarts
- Works for people who want to start free and self-host the open source server
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you don't write backend code
- Tight if you pass 100k actions a month, because the free plan has no overage
- Pricey if you want multi-AZ or a HIPAA BAA, extra at $200 to $500 and $300
- Watch out: the page doesn't say if the monthly prices are annual billing
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
| 2.0GPARestateFair | 2.2GPATrigger.devFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CStarter is $75 a month for 5M actions, Business $300 for 20M and Premium $1,000 for 50M. The page doesn't say whether billing is monthly or annual. | 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 | BFree plan: 100k durable actions a month, no card, though only 1 day of history and no overage option. | 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 | CDurable workflows and agents. Throughput is rate-limited per plan; multi-AZ redundancy and a HIPAA BAA cost extra. | 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 | DNo store rating on record. It's a code-level service for backend developers. | 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 | CWeb console on the listing, with no integrations named. | BWeb dashboard, with an API, webhooks, streaming to a frontend through Realtime and a self-hosting guide. |
| Best for | durable workflows that survive crashes | 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: Restate and Trigger.dev. How we grade
Price against what you get
Restate starts at $75 a month and scores 1.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Trigger.dev starts at $10 a month and scores 2.0.
Trigger.dev scores higher and starts $65 a month lower. Of the other automation tools on the chart, 57 score higher than Restate 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
At a glance
| Restate | Trigger.dev | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $75 per month for 5M actions | $10 per month (Hobby), with $10 of usage credits included |
| Free plan | 100k durable actions a month with community support, no credit card required. | $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 | Restate | API Hero Ltd. |
| Price read from | restate.dev | trigger.dev |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Restate
- Throughput is rate-limited per plan, with burst headroom, and actions past the allotment are billed as overage.
- Multi-AZ redundancy and a HIPAA BAA cost extra: $200 to $500 and $300 respectively.
- The Free plan has no overage option and keeps only 1 day of history.
- The pricing page does not say whether the monthly prices are billed monthly or annually.
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
Restate
- Durable actions
- The unit of billing is a durable action: a call, completion, step, sleep, awakeable, RPC, promise or state access. Each started 64KiB of payload adds one.
- Virtual objects
- Stateful virtual objects keep their data in Restate, with storage included per plan and extra billed at $0.50 per GB a month.
- Bring your own cloud
- BYOC runs the managed service inside your own cloud account and VPC, so data stays in your infrastructure.
- Self-hosting
- The Restate server is open source under a license that allows production use, and can be run for free.
- Security options
- A HIPAA BAA is available for $300 on the higher plans, and SAML SSO and SCIM are listed for the top tiers.
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
Restate
Free$0
100k actions a month, 10 actions per second, 1 GB virtual object storage, 1-day history, community support.
Starter$75
per month for 5M actions; billing basis not stated
50 actions per second, 5 GB storage, 3-day history, 99.9% SLA. Extra actions $25 per million.
Business$300
per month for 20M actions; billing basis not stated
200 actions per second, 20 GB storage, 7-day history, email support. Extra actions $25 per million.
Premium$1,000
per month for 50M actions; billing basis not stated
500 actions per second, 50 GB storage, 30-day history, dedicated Slack channel. Extra actions $15 per million.
EnterpriseCustom
Custom volume, up to hundreds of thousands of actions per second, 99.99% SLA, 24/7 P0 support, legal review.
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
Restate
- Startups
Startup and high-volume discounts on request
The pricing FAQ says higher tiers include volume discounts and that startups should get in touch to ask about discounts.
Trigger.dev
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Restate or Trigger.dev?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Trigger.dev is cheaper to start with: $10 a month, against $75 a month for Restate. Restate starts at $75 per month for 5M actions, and Trigger.dev starts at $10 per month (Hobby), with $10 of usage credits included.
Which has a free plan, Restate or Trigger.dev?
As of Nov 13, 2026, both Restate 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.