Hatchet vs Trigger.dev: Which is Better in 2026?
A comprehensive comparison of Hatchet and Trigger.dev covering features, pricing, use cases, and which tool is the right choice for your needs.
⚡ Quick Verdict
Choose Hatchet if:
- →You need durable execution that resumes rather than restarts or cron scheduling, event and webhook triggers, data ingestion
Choose Trigger.dev if:
- →You need long-running typescript tasks with durable retries and queues or concurrency controls and elastic scaling
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Hatchet vs Trigger.dev: At a Glance
Pricing Comparison: Hatchet vs Trigger.dev
Understanding the pricing differences between Hatchet and Trigger.dev is crucial for making the right choice. Here's how their plans compare side by side.
Hatchet Pricing
Trigger.dev Pricing
💡 Pricing takeaway: Both Hatchet and Trigger.dev offer free tiers, making it easy to try before you buy. Compare the specific plans to find the best value for your use case.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Here's how every feature from Hatchet and Trigger.dev stacks up.
What Makes Each Tool Unique
🔵 Unique to Hatchet
Features available in Hatchet but not in Trigger.dev:
- ✓Durable execution that resumes rather than restarts
- ✓Cron scheduling, event and webhook triggers, data ingestion
- ✓Idempotency keys and batch tasks
- ✓Run-level observability with status, duration and metadata
- ✓Priced at $10 per million task runs
- ✓Open source and self-hostable, SOC 2 Type II from the free tier
🟣 Unique to Trigger.dev
Features available in Trigger.dev but not in Hatchet:
- ✓Long-running TypeScript tasks with durable retries and queues
- ✓Concurrency controls and elastic scaling
- ✓Durable cron scheduling without timeouts
- ✓Realtime streaming from tasks to a frontend
- ✓Official MCP server with agent chat and prompt management
- ✓Open source and self-hostable
Use Case Recommendations
Best for: Hatchet
Hatchet is an open-source orchestration platform for AI agents, background tasks and workflows that have to survive failure. The core capability is durable execution: a task's progress is checkpointed so a crash, redeploy or timeout resumes rather than restarts, which is the property that separates an agent you can run in production from one you babysit. Around that sit the operational pieces such systems always need and rarely have — cron scheduling, event and webhook triggers, data ingestion pipelines, idempotency keys, batch tasks, throughput controls measured in requests per second, and observability over every run with searchable status, duration and metadata. The dashboard shown on the homepage is the honest tell about who this is for: teams whose problem is not writing the workflow but knowing which of the last hundred thousand runs failed and why. Hatchet is genuinely open source and can be self-hosted, with cloud plans layered on for teams that would rather not run the infrastructure. The cloud pricing model is a base plus usage at $10 per million task runs with the first 100,000 free, which is unusually easy to reason about for this category — most competitors price on compute-seconds or concurrency slots that require a modelling exercise to convert into a bill. SOC 2 Type II is included from the free tier, with HIPAA and audit logs at Scale, and the platform reports processing over 100 million tasks a day.
Ideal use cases:
- •Teams or individuals who need durable execution that resumes rather than restarts
- •Teams or individuals who need cron scheduling, event and webhook triggers, data ingestion
- •Teams or individuals who need idempotency keys and batch tasks
- •Teams or individuals who need run-level observability with status, duration and metadata
- •Anyone focused on orchestration workflows
- •Anyone focused on durable-execution workflows
Best for: Trigger.dev
Trigger.dev is an open-source platform for writing long-running AI agents and background workflows in TypeScript and running them as fully managed infrastructure. The problem it exists to solve is the one every serverless deployment hits the moment an agent gets interesting: a task that needs to run for ten minutes, retry a flaky model call, fan out to a hundred sub-tasks and survive a redeploy does not fit a request-response timeout. Tasks are ordinary TypeScript functions with durable execution around them — retries, queues, concurrency limits and elastic scaling are configuration, not code you write. Scheduled tasks give durable cron without timeouts. Realtime connects a frontend directly to a running task so a UI can stream progress rather than poll. Observability and tracing are first-class, with custom dashboards, log retention and alert destinations tiered by plan. The team ships an official MCP server, which as of the current changelog carries agent chat, prompt management and reports, so the platform is drivable from a coding agent as well as from code. It is genuinely open source and self-hostable, with a documented self-hosting guide, and the cloud plans are a convenience layer over that rather than the only way to run it. Cal.com's booking engine is the reference deployment. The pricing model is credits plus concurrency, which maps cleanly onto how agent workloads actually consume resources.
Ideal use cases:
- •Teams or individuals who need long-running typescript tasks with durable retries and queues
- •Teams or individuals who need concurrency controls and elastic scaling
- •Teams or individuals who need durable cron scheduling without timeouts
- •Teams or individuals who need realtime streaming from tasks to a frontend
- •Anyone focused on typescript workflows
- •Anyone focused on background-jobs workflows
🤖 Other AI Agent Infrastructure Tools to Consider
Hatchet and Trigger.dev aren't the only options. Here are other popular tools in the same space:
SuperAGI
Open-source autonomous AI agent framework with visual dashboard — 14K GitHub stars
MetaGPT
Multi-agent AI framework simulating software teams — 45K GitHub stars, builds full apps from prompts
Cerebras
Fastest LLM inference powered by the Wafer Scale Engine.
Scale AI
AI data platform for training data and model evaluation.
Roboflow
End-to-end computer vision platform for developers.
Labelbox
Enterprise data labeling platform for ML training datasets.
Is one of these your tool?
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Hatchet better than Trigger.dev?
It depends on your needs. Hatchet offers 6 key features including Durable execution that resumes rather than restarts and Cron scheduling, event and webhook triggers, data ingestion, while Trigger.dev provides 6 features including Long-running TypeScript tasks with durable retries and queues and Concurrency controls and elastic scaling. Hatchet uses a freemium model with a free tier, while Trigger.dev is freemium with free access available. Choose based on which features and pricing model align with your requirements.
Is Hatchet cheaper than Trigger.dev?
Both tools are similarly priced, starting at $10/month. Both tools offer free tiers, so you can try each before committing. Always check the official websites for the most current pricing.
Can I use Hatchet and Trigger.dev together?
Yes, many users combine Hatchet and Trigger.dev in their workflow. Hatchet excels at durable execution that resumes rather than restarts, while Trigger.dev shines with long-running typescript tasks with durable retries and queues. Using both allows you to leverage the strengths of each tool, though this means managing two subscriptions — though free tiers can help manage costs.
What's the main difference between Hatchet and Trigger.dev?
While both are ai agent infrastructure tools, Hatchet emphasizes durable execution that resumes rather than restarts, whereas Trigger.dev is known for long-running typescript tasks with durable retries and queues. The best choice depends on your specific workflow and feature priorities.
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