Upstash | QStash
Managed HTTP messaging, schedules, queues, retries, callbacks, and failure handling for serverless automation.
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Upstash | QStash scores 7/10 for free value in Schedulers. The main constraint: Free tier: 1,000 messages/day, 10 active schedules, 10 queues, 2 queue parallelism, 1 MB max message size, and 15 min max HTTP response duration.
Free value score
7.0 / 10Show the math
Key metrics
What you get
Cron schedules for recurring HTTP calls
Retries, callbacks, and failure callbacks
Queues with controlled parallelism
Good fit for syncing Notion rules into real schedules
Gotchas
- 1,000 messages/day
Free tier resets daily at 1,000 deliverable HTTP messages; each retry attempt counts as an additional message toward the cap.
- 10 active schedules
Only 10 cron schedules can be active simultaneously on the free tier; paid plans allow up to 1,000+.
- 10 queues max
The free tier is capped at 10 queues total; the Pay-as-You-Go tier allows 100.
- 2 queue parallelism
Queues process only 2 messages in parallel on the free tier; paid tiers go up to 10-1,000.
- 1 MB max message size
Messages larger than 1 MB are rejected with HTTP 412; paid tiers allow 10-50 MB.
- 7-day max message delay
Scheduled messages can be delayed at most 7 days into the future on the free tier; paid tiers allow up to 1 year or unlimited.
- 15 min HTTP response timeout
Target endpoints must respond within 15 minutes; paid tiers extend this to 2-12 hours.
- 3-day DLQ retention
Dead-letter queue entries are retained for only 3 days before being purged; paid plans keep them 7-90 days.
- 3-day log retention
Delivery event logs are available for only 3 days; paid tiers retain 7-14 days.
- 50 GB bandwidth cap
Free tier includes 50 GB of bandwidth per month, shared with the Pay-as-You-Go tier; overages are billed at $0.05/GB on paid plans.
- 1 URL group
Free tier supports only 1 URL group (fan-out topic); paid tiers allow 100-2,000.
- No uptime SLA
Free tier carries no uptime SLA; SLA, SOC-2 certification, Prometheus, and Datadog integrations are paid-tier-only.
Sources
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"Free $0 ... Perfect for prototypes and hobby projects. Messages per Day 1,000"
https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash -
"Max Active Schedules | 10 ... Max Queue Count | 10 ... Queue parallelism | 2 ... Max parallelism | 10 (Free column); Max Message Size 1MB; Max Delay 7 days; Max HTTP Response Duration 15 minutes; Max DLQ Retention 3 days; Max Logs Retention 3 days; Max bandwidth 50 GB"
https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash.md -
"These are soft limits and apply only if you consistently exceed your quota. Short or occasional spikes will NOT immediately block your requests ... the API may start returning 429 rate limit errors."
https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash -
"There is no requests-per-second (RPS) limit for message delivery APIs such as Publish, Enqueue, and Batch ... QStash enforces a Max Parallelism limit"
https://upstash.com/pricing/qstash.md -
"Upstash announced a $1.9 million seed round almost exactly two years ago ... Upstash's serverless data platform hits ARR of $1M just two years after seed funding"
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/08/upstashs-serverless-data-platform-hits-arr-of-1m-just-two-years-after-seed-funding/
