Upstash | Workflow
Durable serverless workflow steps with retries, sleeps, callbacks, HTTP calls, and QStash-backed scheduling.
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Upstash | Workflow scores 6.2/10 for free value in Functions. The main constraint: Free tier: 1,000 steps/day, 1,000 steps per workflow run, 10 concurrent steps, 1 MB max message size, 7 day max sleep, and 15 min max HTTP response duration.
Free value score
6.2 / 10Show the math
Key metrics
What you get
1,000 workflow steps/day free
Retries, sleeps, waits, calls, and invokes
Scheduled workflows use QStash schedules
Good fit for light agent-like automations
Gotchas
- 1,000 steps/day
Free tier is capped at 1,000 workflow steps per day; each retry of a failed step counts as an additional billed step.
- 10 concurrent steps max
Only 10 steps can run in parallel at any time on the free tier; paid plans allow 100–1,000.
- 1,000 steps per workflow run
A single workflow run cannot execute more than 1,000 steps total, regardless of plan.
- 1 MB max message size
Step payloads and inter-step responses are capped at 1 MB; paid plans offer 10–50 MB.
- 7-day max sleep duration
Workflows can sleep for at most 7 days on the free tier; paid plans allow up to 1 year or unlimited.
- 15-minute max HTTP response duration
HTTP calls from a workflow step time out after 15 minutes; paid tiers allow 2–12 hours.
- 3-day DLQ and log retention
Dead-letter queue entries and execution logs are only retained for 3 days; paid plans extend this to 7–90 days.
- No uptime SLA
The free tier carries no uptime SLA; SLA tiers are only available on paid Fixed and Enterprise plans.
- Step execution throttled on daily limit
Once the 1,000 steps/day quota is hit, QStash returns errors and the SDK throttles retries; runs that exhaust retries are failed and moved to the DLQ.
- 50 GB bandwidth/month
Free tier includes 50 GB/month of bandwidth; usage beyond this is billed at $0.05/GB.
Sources
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"Max Steps per Day | 1,000 ... Max Steps per Workflow Run | 1,000 ... Max Message Size | 1MB ... Max Sleep Duration | 7 days ... Max HTTP Response Duration | 15 minutes"
https://upstash.com/pricing/workflow -
"Free | $0/month | 1,000 | 1 MB | 10 (Plan | Price | Steps per day | Max message size | Max parallelism)"
https://upstash.com/pricing/workflow -
"There is no requests-per-second (RPS) limit for Workflow execution APIs. ... QStash enforces a Max Concurrent Steps limit ... Additional steps are queued and executed later."
https://upstash.com/pricing/workflow -
"Fast-forward to now and the company is boasting ARR of $1 million, a $10 million Series A led by a16z and a shiny new vector database."
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/08/upstashs-serverless-data-platform-hits-arr-of-1m-just-two-years-after-seed-funding/
