Trigger.dev Review, Pricing & Features

Trigger.dev is an open-source TypeScript platform for background jobs and AI workflows. See pricing from 10 dollars a month and key features.

Category
Developer Tools
Pricing
usage-based, from Free (paid plans from $10/month)
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
July 19, 2026
Founded
2022
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Free PlanAPIOpen SourceAIFreemium

What Is Trigger.dev

Trigger.dev is an open-source platform for building and running background jobs, durable long-running tasks, and AI agent workflows in TypeScript. It was founded in 2022 by Matt Aitken, Eric Allam, Dan Patel, and James Ritchie in London and went through Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch before raising a seed round backed by early-stage investors.

The platform is aimed squarely at software engineering teams that need to run code reliably outside the request-response cycle of a typical web server, such as long-running AI agent tasks, scheduled jobs, data pipeline steps, and webhook processing that can take minutes or hours rather than milliseconds.

Its core is open source and can be self-hosted, while most users run their jobs on Trigger.dev's fully-managed cloud, which handles infrastructure, scaling, retries, and observability so engineering teams do not need to build and operate their own job queue and worker infrastructure from scratch.

Key Features

Trigger.dev provides a TypeScript-native SDK for defining tasks, jobs, and workflows directly in application code, with automatic retries and durable execution so a task can recover from a failure or a deploy without losing progress. Task queues allow developers to control concurrency precisely, and elastic, fully-managed infrastructure scales workers up and down automatically based on load.

Every run is fully observable, with built-in tracing and detailed logs that make it possible to debug long-running or multi-step tasks the same way a developer would debug a normal function call. The platform also supports scheduled and recurring tasks using familiar cron-style syntax, alongside first-class support for building AI agent workflows.

Because the core SDK and server are open source, teams that need to keep everything in their own infrastructure can self-host Trigger.dev rather than relying on the managed cloud, while still getting the same developer experience and tooling.

Pricing

Trigger.dev's cloud pricing combines a monthly plan fee with usage-based compute and invocation costs. The Free plan includes 5 dollars of monthly credits, 20 concurrent runs, 10 schedules, and 1 day of log retention; Hobby is 10 dollars a month with more credits and higher limits; and Pro is 50 dollars a month with 200 or more concurrent runs, 1,000 or more schedules, 30-day log retention, and dedicated Slack support.

Beyond the included monthly credits, tasks are billed per second of execution time based on compute size, plus a small per-run invocation fee of about 0.000025 dollars per run. An Enterprise tier offers custom pricing with extended log retention, single sign-on, and compliance reports such as SOC 2 for organizations with stricter requirements.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Open source with a genuinely self-hostable option
  • TypeScript-first developer experience tailored to modern web and AI stacks
  • Generous free plan with real usage credits rather than a hard feature cap
  • Purpose-built for long-running and AI agent workflows, not just simple queues
  • Backed by Y Combinator with active, ongoing development

Cons

  • Small, young company relative to established workflow platforms
  • Usage-based compute pricing can be difficult to forecast at scale
  • Requires TypeScript and coding knowledge, unlike no-code automation tools
  • Fewer pre-built app integrations than no-code platforms like Zapier or Make
  • Smaller community and ecosystem than more established job frameworks

Pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Trigger.dev?

It is an open-source TypeScript platform for building background jobs, durable tasks, and AI agent workflows.

Is Trigger.dev free?

Yes, there is a free plan that includes monthly usage credits and core features, with paid plans starting at 10 dollars a month for higher limits.

Who founded Trigger.dev?

Trigger.dev was founded in 2022 by Matt Aitken, Eric Allam, Dan Patel, and James Ritchie.

Is Trigger.dev open source?

Yes, its core platform is open source and can be self-hosted in addition to using the managed cloud.

Was Trigger.dev part of Y Combinator?

Yes, it went through Y Combinator's Winter 2023 (W23) batch.

How is Trigger.dev priced?

Pricing combines a monthly plan fee with usage-based compute charges billed per second of execution, plus a small per-run invocation fee.

How does Trigger.dev differ from Temporal?

Trigger.dev is TypeScript-first with a fully-managed cloud and simpler developer experience, aimed at web and AI engineering teams, rather than being a general-purpose, language-agnostic workflow engine.

Can I self-host Trigger.dev?

Yes, its open-source core can be self-hosted for teams that need to keep everything on their own infrastructure.

Comparisons

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