The 8 Best Hatchet Alternatives in 2026

Inngest is a developer platform for background jobs, scheduled tasks, and durable multi-step workflows. You write functions that react to events or run on a cron, and Inngest handles retries, state, concurrency, and flow control. A free Hobby tier covers small projects; paid plans scale on usage.

• No infrastructure to run
• Durable multi-step workflows
• Event-driven + cron in one model

Sidekiq is the de facto background-job framework for Ruby and Rails, using threads and Redis for high throughput. The open-source core is free; Sidekiq Pro and Enterprise add reliability features, batches, rate limiting, and unique jobs with commercial support.

• Fast and memory-efficient
• The standard for Rails
• Simple, reliable, well-documented

Trigger.dev is an open-source platform for writing background tasks and AI agent workflows in plain TypeScript, with durable execution, retries, and no function timeouts. Run it fully managed in the cloud or self-host. A free tier covers small workloads; paid plans add runs, concurrency, and history.

• Open-source and self-hostable
• Write jobs in plain TypeScript
• No execution timeouts

BullMQ is an open-source (MIT) Redis-backed queue library for Node.js, used for background jobs, rate-limited workers, delayed/repeatable jobs, and flows. It is a library you run yourself against your own Redis; an optional commercial BullMQ Pro adds advanced features like groups and observability.

• Free and open-source
• Very fast on Redis
• Mature, widely adopted in Node

Temporal is a durable-execution engine for orchestrating long-running, reliable workflows across many languages (Go, Java, TypeScript, Python, .NET). The open-source server is free to self-host; Temporal Cloud is a fully managed, usage-metered service. It is the heavyweight choice for complex, stateful, business-critical orchestration.

• Battle-tested durable execution
• Polyglot SDKs
• Handles very complex, long-running workflows

Graphile Worker is an open-source (MIT) job queue for Node.js that uses your existing PostgreSQL database (via LISTEN/NOTIFY) instead of a separate broker. It supports cron, retries, and low-latency job processing, making it a great fit for teams that already run Postgres and want to avoid Redis.

• No extra infrastructure (uses Postgres)
• Free and open-source
• Low latency

River is an open-source background job queue for Go that stores jobs in PostgreSQL, enabling transactional enqueue alongside your application data. It offers strong typing, retries, periodic jobs, and a UI. The core is free and open-source; River Pro adds workflow and sequencing features.

• Idiomatic Go with strong typing
• Transactional enqueue on Postgres
• No separate broker needed

QStash by Upstash is a serverless messaging and scheduling service that delivers HTTP requests with retries, delays, and cron schedules — ideal for triggering background work from serverless and edge functions. It is fully usage-based with a free daily quota, so there are no servers or queues to manage.

• Zero infrastructure to manage
• Perfect for serverless/edge
• Built-in cron scheduling