starter.wiki

Serverless message delivery

Upstash QStash

A managed HTTP message-delivery product with signed requests, queues, retries, delays, and schedules.

Visit official site

Editorial verdict

Choose QStash when signed HTTP delivery and managed retries remove more work than per-delivery economics and endpoint coupling create.14789

Best for

  • Serverless HTTP callbacks
  • Delayed and retried endpoint delivery
  • Teams avoiding always-on polling consumers
14789

Not ideal for

  • High-volume pull processing
  • Rich broker topology or replayable streams
  • Workflows needing durable task state
14789
Main trade-off

HTTP simplicity and low consumer infrastructure trade against per-delivery/retry billing and endpoint idempotency constraints.14789

Product boundary

Whether managed HTTP push delivery fits better than a continuously polling queue consumer.

QStash delivers messages to endpoints. It does not replace destination compute, durable workflow state, Redis, or a general enterprise broker; scheduling remains secondary in this closure.7

For: Serverless and HTTP-first applications with idempotent endpoints

  • The workload needs polling or high-throughput broker consumers.
  • Retries or schedules materially change billable message volume.
  • The destination cannot make side effects idempotent.

Why teams consider Upstash QStash

  • Signed HTTP deliveryDestinations receive managed requests without polling a broker.7
  • Delivery controlsRetries, delay, queues, and schedules cover common endpoint-delivery needs.7
  • Serverless fitThe destination can be an ordinary serverless HTTP endpoint.7

Pricing

Messages, retries, schedule triggers, retention, delay, throughput, and fixed-plan boundaries shape cost; destination compute is separate.9

Evaluation

Free — 1,000 messages per day

Verified 2026-07-25; plan-specific retry, retention, delay, and throughput limits apply.9

Variable production

Pay as you go — $1 per 100,000 messages

Retries and schedule triggers are billable messages; fixed plans and destination compute are separate.9

Primary meter
Messages and each billable retry or schedule trigger9
Separate cost
Destination compute and adjacent Upstash products9
Pricing checked View official pricing

Upstash QStash vs alternatives

Amazon SQS

Choose when
Choose it for AWS pull consumers and Standard/FIFO queues.
Compared with Upstash QStash
More consumer infrastructure with AWS-native queue semantics.13

Cloudflare Queues

Choose when
Choose it for Workers-native batched consumers.
Compared with Upstash QStash
Tighter runtime coupling with queue-consumer semantics.46

Azure Service Bus

Choose when
Choose it for enterprise broker topology and sessions.
Compared with Upstash QStash
Richer semantics with more operational and tier complexity.1012

Resources and sources

Official product, policy, and pricing

  • Upstash QStash queues
    Open
  • Upstash QStash retries
    Open
  • Upstash QStash pricing
    Open
  1. 1
    Amazon SQS developer guide

    Amazon Web Services · Accessed Official

  2. 2
    Amazon SQS at-least-once delivery

    Amazon Web Services · Accessed Official

  3. 3
    Amazon SQS pricing

    Amazon Web Services · Accessed Official

  4. 4
    Cloudflare Queues documentation

    Cloudflare · Accessed Official

  5. 5
    Cloudflare Queues delivery guarantees

    Cloudflare · Accessed Official

  6. 6
    Cloudflare Queues pricing

    Cloudflare · Accessed Official

  7. 7
    Upstash QStash queues

    Upstash · Accessed Official

  8. 8
    Upstash QStash retries

    Upstash · Accessed Official

  9. 9
    Upstash QStash pricing

    Upstash · Accessed Official

  10. 10
    Azure Service Bus overview

    Microsoft · Accessed Official

  11. 11
    Azure Service Bus sessions

    Microsoft · Accessed Official

  12. 12
    Azure Service Bus pricing

    Microsoft · Accessed Official