# Temporal vs Trigger.dev

> Temporal has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Trigger.dev's 74.8 (BB). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 20 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/temporal-vs-trigger-dev
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/temporal-vs-trigger-dev.md (~1,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/temporal-vs-trigger-dev.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/temporal-vs-trigger-dev.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Temporal has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Trigger.dev's 74.8 (BB). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 20 points.

- Temporal: grade BB, 77.2/100, rank #21 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/temporal.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/temporal.json
- Trigger.dev: grade BB, 74.8/100, rank #46 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/trigger-dev.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/trigger-dev.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Temporal for reliability (+10), agent ergonomics (+6), security & auth (+13).

Pick Trigger.dev for payments & pricing (+20).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Temporal | Trigger.dev | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 85 | 75 | Temporal +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 91 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 79 | Temporal +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 86 | 73 | Temporal +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Trigger.dev +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 90 | even |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 74 | Trigger.dev +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **77.2 · BB** | **74.8 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Temporal | Trigger.dev |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Temporal Technologies | Trigger.dev |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.trigger.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 31 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.triggerdotdev/trigger.dev` |
| Last release | 2026-09-15 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | none | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.6/5 (8) | 3.6/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Temporal.** Waits of any length with a timeout survive worker restarts and deploys. No reviewer inbox, notifications or routing, so the human side is all your code.

**Trigger.dev.** Tokens complete from a backend, a pre-signed callback URL or the browser with a token scoped to one waitpoint. 10-minute default timeout on tokens.

## Before you call either

### Temporal

1. Put the decision in a typed Signal payload (approver, decision, comments, timestamp) instead of a bare boolean
2. Always wait with a timeout and treat the timeout path as a rejection or an escalation on purpose
3. Use the workflow ID as the approval ID, so the reviewer's tool only needs one value to send the Signal
4. Use an Update instead of a Signal when the approver's tool needs an acknowledgement back
5. Expect `ResourceExhausted` under load and let the SDK retry it, since signals are throttled last

### Trigger.dev

1. Pass an explicit `timeout` to `wait.createToken()` and handle `ok: false` as a timeout
2. Use an idempotency key when creating the token so a retried step doesn't send the reviewer a second request
3. Give the browser the `publicAccessToken`, never the secret key, and don't call `token.url` from client code
4. Tag tokens with the user or task ID so pending approvals can be listed per reviewer
5. Start the MCP server with `--readonly` when the agent only needs to inspect runs

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