Upstash QStash

What Upstash QStash is

Upstash QStash is a cloud service for messaging and scheduling that sits between an application and an API. It supports at-least-once delivery, automatic retries, scheduled messages, and HTTP delivery. URL Groups send a message to multiple endpoints in parallel; queues deliver messages in enqueue order. Flow Control limits delivery rate and parallelism, placing excess messages on a waitlist. Failed jobs can be retried or managed through a dead letter queue, and deduplication helps prevent duplicate deliveries. QStash also documents integrations for OpenAI-compatible providers and Anthropic, including batched chat completion requests with results sent to a callback. Requests include an HMAC-SHA256 signed JWT in the Upstash-Signature header for authenticity checks. The Free plan costs nothing, with 1,000 messages per day, 50 GB bandwidth, a 1 MB message limit, and a seven-day maximum delay. Pay as You Go is $1 a month, billed at $1 per 100K messages; it includes a 10 MB message limit and up to a one-year delay. Fixed plans and Enterprise offer higher stated limits.

Who it suits

QStash suits developers who need scheduled or queued HTTP message delivery, retries, endpoint fan-out, or flow controls. Its documented LLM integrations may also suit teams routing chat completion requests through supported providers.

Limits

The Free plan includes 1,000 messages per day, 50 GB of bandwidth, a 1 MB maximum message size, and a seven-day maximum delay. Pay as You Go includes 50 GB of bandwidth before charges of $0.05/GB, a 10 MB maximum message size, and a one-year maximum delay. Fixed 1M includes 1M messages per day, 1 TB bandwidth, 50 MB maximum message size, and 10,000 active schedules.

Getting started

1. Open the Upstash QStash website.
2. Choose the Free plan or a paid plan based on its listed limits.
3. Use the web or API platform to work with QStash.
4. Select the EU or US region for your messages and resources.

Verdict

QStash combines scheduling, queue ordering, retries, deduplication, and endpoint controls in a cloud HTTP messaging service. Compare the message, bandwidth, size, and delay limits across plans with your workload before choosing one.