# Hatchet review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Open-source task queue and durable workflow engine Checked Nov 13, 2026 ยท graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA. Hatchet is a task orchestration platform for background jobs, durable workflows, cron schedules and AI agents. Task runs are retried and can be replayed, with logs and traces in a dashboard. It is MIT licensed and can be self-hosted, or run on Hatchet Cloud, where billing is by runs and events. - **Category:** Automation - **Made by:** Hatchet Technologies, Inc. - **Website:** https://hatchet.run - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you don't write code, as tasks are defined in an SDK. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 13, 2026, Hatchet has a free plan, and paid plans start at $0, then $30 per million runs and $5 per million events. - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** Pay-as-you-go: 1M runs and 1M events free every month, 100 workers, 10 tenants and 50 users with a card on file. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Pay-as-you-go | $0 to start, then usage-based | 1M runs and 1M events free each month, then $30 per million runs, $5 per million events and $0.10 per GB of durable streams. | | Custom | Custom | For 100M+ runs a month: dedicated capacity, SSO, RBAC, audit logs, HIPAA, SLAs, and self-hosted or BYOC support. | Read from https://hatchet.run/pricing on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Hatchet before buying. ## Key features - **Durable execution:** Workflows and agents are checkpointed so work resumes after a failure. A failed task can be retried automatically or replayed by hand. - **Background tasks and cron:** Runs background jobs at scale and creates dynamic cron schedules for recurring workflows. - **Webhooks and events:** Events and webhooks can trigger workflows, and events can satisfy wait conditions inside a running workflow. - **Observability:** Traces, logs, metrics and alerts are available for each run, with 7 days of retention on the paid-card pay-as-you-go tier. - **Self-hosting:** The pricing page says Hatchet is 100% open source under the MIT license, and the Custom plan covers self-hosted and hybrid setups. ## Good for - Engineering teams replacing a queue like Celery with durable workflows - Teams that want to start on the free tier and self-host later ## Worth knowing - Without a card on file the free tier is limited to 2,000 task runs and 2,000 events a day, with 1-day retention. - If a limit is passed on the free tier, new tasks are dropped and creation errors appear. - Retries are not billed, but failed runs count as runs. - SSO, RBAC, audit logs and HIPAA BAA are listed only on the Custom plan. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.2 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Hatchet runs durable background tasks and workflows, and you pay by runs and events, $0 to start. Without a card on file the free tier is 2,000 task runs and 2,000 events a day with 1 day of retention, failed runs still count, and SSO, RBAC and audit logs are Custom only. - **Value for money: B.** Starts at $0, then $30 per million runs and $5 per million events, with 1 million of each free a month when a card is on file. - **Free plan and trial: B.** With a card on file: 1M runs and 1M events a month free. Without one, 2,000 runs and events a day and 1 day of retention. - **Features: C.** Task queues and workflows. SSO, RBAC, audit logs and a HIPAA BAA are listed only on Custom. - **Ease of use: D.** No store rating on record. You write the tasks in code and run workers. - **Platforms and integrations: C.** Web dashboard only, and no integrations list on the listing. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Hatchet's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among automation tools - Hatchet's GPA of 2.2 is higher than 54 of the 134 other automation tools we grade, and level with 35. - It stands best on value for money (B, above 105 of 134) and worst on ease of use (D, above 0). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/automation ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Hatchet you would be making connections to other products, each kept working as those products change. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. Hatchet is open source, so there is a third way: take its code and run it yourself. - You could make: Job scheduling: an app builder makes this well. - You could not: Connections to other products, each kept working as those products change. - You could not: An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. **Tags:** Workflow automation, Job scheduling, Open source, Self-hostable, AI agents ## Alternatives - [Restate](https://toolgpa.com/tools/restate): Durable execution runtime for backends and AI agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hatchet-vs-restate) - [Inngest](https://toolgpa.com/tools/inngest): Durable execution for background jobs, event-driven apps and agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hatchet-vs-inngest) - [Trigger.dev](https://toolgpa.com/tools/trigger-dev): Open-source platform for long-running background tasks and AI agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hatchet-vs-trigger-dev) - [Prefect](https://toolgpa.com/tools/prefect): Python workflow orchestration with an open-source core and a cloud. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hatchet-vs-prefect) - [Dagster](https://toolgpa.com/tools/dagster): Asset-based data orchestration platform, now part of Prefect. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/dagster-vs-hatchet) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026: - https://hatchet.run/pricing - https://hatchet.run/ Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/hatchet Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).