Trigger.dev
Code-first background jobs and AI workflows, no timeouts
Overview
Trigger.dev is an open-source (Apache-2.0) platform for writing long-running background jobs and AI workflows as plain async TypeScript, with automatic retries, queues, elastic scaling and no execution timeouts. Use the managed cloud or self-host with Docker.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 3 Sep 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- $5 monthly credits
- 20 concurrent runs
- 5 team members
- 1-day log retention
- $10 monthly credits
- 50 concurrent runs
- 7-day log retention
- 3 alert destinations
- $50 monthly credits
- 200+ concurrent runs
- 30-day log retention
- Dedicated Slack support
- AWS PrivateLink support
- Custom log retention
- SOC 2 and pen-test reports
- SSO and RBAC
- Priority support
What you can produce with Trigger.dev
- Background jobs and AI workflows written as plain async TypeScript
- No execution timeouts on long-running tasks
- Automatic retries and queuing
- Elastic auto-scaling with no infrastructure to manage
- Human-in-the-loop workflow steps
- Real-time run observability and logs dashboard
- Self-hostable via Docker Compose or Kubernetes (Apache-2.0)
- SOC 2 and penetration-test reports (Enterprise)
Trigger.dev solves the boring-but-critical problem underneath most AI features: something has to run a multi-minute agent loop or a batch job reliably, with retries and observability, without a serverless function timing out at 10 or 60 seconds. Writing jobs as plain async TypeScript in your own repo — rather than a visual workflow builder — keeps automation logic in Git and code review, which is the main reason developers pick it over n8n or Zapier for anything beyond simple triggers.
It's Apache-2.0 licensed and genuinely self-hostable via Docker Compose or Kubernetes with no feature gating, which is unusual for a dev-tools company at this stage. The managed cloud starts free (20 concurrent runs, 1-day log retention) and scales through $10 and $50/month tiers before Enterprise SSO and SOC 2 reports. Reference customers like Supabase and Magic Patterns suggest it holds up in production, though it's still a smaller team than Inngest or Temporal if you need deep support.
What people say
Trigger.dev competes in a crowded background-jobs space (Inngest, Temporal, Zapier, n8n) on a specific pitch: write jobs as ordinary async TypeScript functions in your own codebase, with no execution timeout, rather than configuring a visual workflow or fighting serverless function limits. Independent commentary tends to agree on the differentiator — reviewers comparing it to Zapier and n8n note it's aimed at developers who want type safety and code-level control rather than a no-code canvas, and Product Hunt reviews specifically call out developer speed and practicality versus those no-code alternatives. One notable endorsement: the team behind Reloop described it as one of the better background-task experiences they'd used, citing completeness and reliability rather than any single flashy feature.
Production references are concrete rather than just logos on a page: Supabase, Magic Patterns and Flick.social are cited as running real workloads — retries, queuing, and concurrent operation handling — on top of it. That's a meaningfully different bar from a framework that only shows up in 'awesome-list' GitHub repos.
On licensing, Trigger.dev is genuinely open (Apache-2.0), and self-hosting via Docker Compose or Kubernetes removes the usual open-core feature gate — you get unlimited runs without a license key. That matters for teams wary of vendor lock-in on infrastructure-adjacent tooling.
Pricing on the managed cloud is straightforward: Free gives 20 concurrent runs, 5 team members and 1-day log retention on $5 of monthly credits; Hobby at $10/month bumps concurrency to 50 and retention to 7 days; Pro at $50/month is aimed at real production use — 200-plus concurrent runs, 30-day retention, dedicated Slack support and AWS PrivateLink; Enterprise adds custom log retention, RBAC, SOC 2 and penetration-test reports, and SSO, priced on request. Compute is metered on top of the credit allowance at $0.0000169 to $0.00068 per second depending on machine size, plus a small per-run invocation fee — worth modeling before committing to a tier if your jobs are compute-heavy rather than just numerous.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Trigger.dev's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Trigger.dev unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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