Stack guides / Jobs and caching

Background jobs, queues and caching

Work that shouldn’t happen while the user waits: reminders, emails, imports, AI calls. Plus caching and rate limiting.

9 options. Free tiers, catches and prices checked by hand on 2026-10-27; each one links to its sources.

Jobs

Cloudflare Queues + Cron TriggersService

Cloudflare’s message queue and scheduled triggers for running background work in Workers.

Best for: Apps already deployed on Cloudflare Workers. Skip it if: Your jobs need real CPU time and you won’t pay $5/mo.

Official Cloudflare API MCP (mcp.cloudflare.com/mcp) plus a docs MCP.

Workers Free

  • Queues: 10,000 operations/day (~3,333 messages at 3 ops each)
  • 24-hour message retention (fixed)
  • 5 Cron Triggers per account
  • 10 ms CPU per cron invocation

The 10 ms CPU limit per invocation rules out heavy jobs on Free.

Workers Paid $5/mo (1M queue ops, then $0.40/M; 250 crons)

Checked 2026-10-27: developers.cloudflare.com, developers.cloudflare.com, developers.cloudflare.com

InngestSSPL-1.0

A durable workflow engine that runs event-triggered background functions as retryable steps.

Best for: Multi-step, retryable workflows and AI agent pipelines on serverless hosts. Skip it if: You need an OSI-licensed server to self-host (it’s SSPL with delayed Apache-2.0; SDKs are Apache-2.0).

Dev server exposes an MCP endpoint (127.0.0.1:8288/mcp) for Claude Code and Cursor; llms.txt.

Free

  • 50K executions/month (every run and step counts)
  • 5 concurrent steps
  • 500K events/month
  • 24-hour trace and log history

Work pauses when the 50K quota runs out; Free has no overage.

Pro from $99/mo (1M executions)

Checked 2026-10-27: inngest.com, github.com, inngest.com

Supabase CronPostgreSQL

A scheduler inside Supabase Postgres, built on pg_cron, that runs SQL or HTTP calls on a schedule.

Best for: Recurring SQL jobs and webhooks for apps already on Supabase. Skip it if: Jobs run longer than about 10 minutes.

Official Supabase MCP (mcp.supabase.com) can run the SQL that creates jobs; llms.txt.

Supabase Free (pg_cron)

  • Schedules from every second to once a year
  • Recommended max 8 concurrent jobs, 10 minutes each
  • Runs SQL, database functions or HTTP/Edge Function calls (500K Edge invocations/month on Free)

Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity, and a paused project runs no jobs.

Supabase Pro from $25/mo

Checked 2026-10-27: supabase.com, supabase.com, github.com

Trigger.devApache-2.0

An open-source platform for long-running background tasks, schedules and AI agents in TypeScript.

Best for: Long-running TypeScript jobs (AI calls, media, scraping) without function timeouts. Skip it if: A single daily cron is all you need.

Official MCP server (npx trigger.dev@latest install-mcp), agent rules and skills; llms.txt.

Free

  • $5 usage credit/month
  • 20 concurrent runs
  • 10 schedules
  • 1-day log retention

When the $5 credit is used up, tasks stop until you upgrade.

Hobby $10/mo (includes $10 usage)

Checked 2026-10-27: trigger.dev, trigger.dev

Upstash QStashService

A serverless HTTP message queue and scheduler that calls your endpoints with retries.

Best for: Cron and fan-out to serverless endpoints that can’t run workers. Skip it if: You need high message volume for free.

Official remote Upstash MCP (mcp.upstash.com) publishes messages and reads schedules, logs and DLQ; llms.txt.

Free

  • 1,000 messages/day
  • 10 active schedules
  • 1 MB messages, 7-day max delay
  • Queue parallelism 2

Only 1,000 messages a day and 10 schedules.

Pay-as-you-go $1 per 100K messages; fixed plans from $180/mo

Checked 2026-10-27: upstash.com, upstash.com

Vercel Cron JobsService

Scheduled invocations of Vercel Functions, configured in vercel.json.

Best for: A daily cleanup or digest job in a Vercel app. Skip it if: You need hourly or precise timing, or the app makes money.

Official Vercel MCP (mcp.vercel.com, beta) and llms.txt; jobs live in vercel.json.

Hobby

  • Commercial use: not allowed
  • 100 cron jobs per project
  • At most once per day
  • Fires anytime within the scheduled hour (±59 min)

Schedules more frequent than daily fail at deploy, and Hobby is non-commercial only.

Pro $20/mo (per-minute schedules)

Checked 2026-10-27: vercel.com, vercel.com, vercel.com

Cache

Cloudflare Workers KVService

A global, eventually consistent key-value store for Cloudflare Workers.

Best for: Read-heavy config, feature flags and cached responses at the edge. Skip it if: You need atomic counters or rate limits; use Durable Objects or Redis.

Official Cloudflare API MCP (mcp.cloudflare.com/mcp).

Workers Free

  • 100,000 reads/day
  • 1,000 writes/day
  • 1 GB storage
  • 1 write/sec per key

Eventually consistent (changes can take 60+ seconds to appear elsewhere), so it’s wrong for counters or rate limiting.

Workers Paid $5/mo (10M reads, 1M writes included)

Checked 2026-10-27: developers.cloudflare.com, developers.cloudflare.com, developers.cloudflare.com

Redis Cloud (free database)AGPL-3.0

Redis Inc.'s managed Redis service, with a small free database.

Best for: Trying managed Redis before paying. Skip it if: You need production throughput for free.

Official Redis MCP server (redis/mcp-redis); llms.txt.

Essentials Free (30 MB)

  • 30 MB, 1 free database per account
  • 30 concurrent connections
  • 100 ops/sec
  • 5 GB bandwidth/month

Prototype-sized: no high availability or backups until paid plans.

Essentials 250 MB from $5/mo

Checked 2026-10-27: redis.io, redis.io, github.com

Upstash RedisService

Serverless Redis key-value store billed per request, popular for caching and rate limits.

Best for: Caching, rate limiting, sessions and queues in serverless apps. Skip it if: You need a primary relational database or more than 250 MB for free.

Native Vercel Marketplace integration and an official hosted MCP server (mcp.upstash.com/mcp).

Free

  • 1 database
  • 250 MB data
  • 500,000 commands per month
  • 10 GB bandwidth per month
  • 10 MB max request size

Only one free database per account.

Pay-as-you-go, $0.20 per 100K commands with no monthly fee; fixed plans from $10/mo

Checked 2026-10-27: upstash.com, upstash.com, upstash.com

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