No. 14 of 38 ·Message Broker Software

Upstash QStash

Web · API · paid plans from $1/mo

Freedom report

Two barsScore 6.4

Free tierA free tier is on its own pricing page
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely1 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

Upstash QStash is ranked #14 of 38 in message broker software on Freedom251. It runs on API, Web. There is a free plan. Paid plans start at $1/mo.

Upstash QStash plans and pricing

All plans

Free Free $0/month 1,000 messages/day · 50 GB bandwidth · 1 MB max message size · 7-day max delay upstash.com · 5 Oct 2026

Pay as You Go $1/mo $1 per 100K messages Unlimited messages/day · 50 GB bandwidth, then $0.05/GB · 10 MB max message size · 1-year max delay upstash.com · 5 Oct 2026

Fixed 1M $180/mo $180/month 1M messages/day · 1 TB bandwidth · 50 MB max message size · 10,000 active schedules upstash.com · 5 Oct 2026

Prod Pack $200/mo +$200/month Add-on · Uptime SLA · Encryption at Rest · SOC-2 · Prometheus · Datadog upstash.com · 5 Oct 2026

Fixed 10M $420/mo $420/month 10M messages/day · 5 TB bandwidth · 50 MB max message size · 50,000 active schedules upstash.com · 5 Oct 2026

Enterprise Not published Custom 100M+ messages/day · Unlimited bandwidth · Custom message size and limits upstash.com · 5 Oct 2026

Compared on message broker software

Free plan: Yes
Deployment model: cloud
Delivery guarantees: at_least_once
Dead-letter queues: Yes
Ordering guarantees: per_queue
Maximum message size: 10 MB
Supported protocols: HTTP

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The record

What it does: QStash is a serverless messaging and scheduling solution that acts as a middleman between an application and an API to provide delivery guarantees and automatic retries.
Scheduling: QStash can schedule messages for future delivery, with the maximum delay depending on the plan.
Fan-out: URL Groups let QStash publish messages to multiple endpoints in parallel.
FIFO queues: Queues can deliver enqueued messages one by one in the order they were enqueued.
Flow control: Flow Control sets rate and parallelism limits for endpoint delivery, with excess messages added to a waitlist.
Failed messages: QStash supports retrying failed jobs and using a dead letter queue to manage failed messages.
Deduplication: QStash supports deduplication to prevent duplicate messages from being delivered.
LLM integrations: QStash documents integrations for OpenAI-compatible providers and Anthropic, including batching chat completion requests and delivering results to a callback.
Payload limit: The Getting Started page states a default message size limit of 1 MB, which can be customized at the customer's request.
Request security: QStash sends an HMAC-SHA256 signed JWT in the Upstash-Signature header, which customers can verify to check request authenticity.
Prod Pack SLA: Prod Pack accounts include an SLA guaranteeing 99.99% uptime.
Regions: QStash is available in EU and US regions, which have independent infrastructure, pricing, resources, logs, and messages.
Support: Upstash says customers on any subscription plan can contact its team at [email protected] for technical support, questions, and feedback.
Headquarters: California, United States
Price from: $1/mo

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Message Broker Software in 2026#14 of 38
Best Task Queue Software in 2026#9 of 37

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Sources

upstash.com/docs/qstash/overall/getstarted· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/docs/qstash/features/flowcontrol· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/docs/qstash/integrations/llm· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/docs/qstash/features/security· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/docs/qstash/overall/enterprise· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/docs/qstash/howto/multi-region· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/docs/common/help/support· checked 5 Oct 2026
upstash.com/qstash· checked 28 Sept 2026
upstash.com/pricing/qstash· checked 5 Oct 2026