Zapier
n8nAbout Trigger.dev
Trigger.dev asks a simple question: if your product is code, why is your automation a diagram in someone else's SaaS? With it, background jobs and long-running workflows are plain TypeScript functions in your repository — reviewed in PRs, tested in CI, deployed with your app.
The platform supplies what's hard about background work: durable execution with no timeouts, automatic retries, queues, cron schedules, concurrency controls and a dashboard with full run traces. Long-running AI agent workflows — hours of LLM calls, tool use and waits — are a headline use case.
It's Apache-2.0, self-hostable with Docker, and pairs a polished cloud offering with the option to keep everything on your own infrastructure. For product engineers, it replaces both the flaky in-house job runner and the temptation to duct-tape n8n into the backend.
What makes it different
Jobs run for seconds or days — checkpointed and resumed, no serverless time limits.
Define tasks in your codebase with full type safety — no DSL, no canvas, no vendor UI to click through.
Long chains of LLM calls, tool use, human-approval waits and streaming — with per-run observability.
Production-grade reliability primitives out of the box, visible in a clean runs dashboard.
How to install Trigger.dev
A hands-on walkthrough of getting Trigger.dev up and running — follow along and you'll have it self-hosted in one sitting.
TypeScript
Node.js
PostgreSQL
DockerThe honest read
- Automation lives in your repo with code review and CI
- Durable execution — no timeout ceilings
- First-class fit for AI agent workloads
- Excellent developer experience and dashboard
- Apache-2.0 and self-hostable
- TypeScript only — no visual builder for non-devs
- No library of SaaS connectors; you call APIs yourself
- Self-hosting v3+ is more involved than a single container
- Young compared to queue veterans like Celery
Quick answers
The open-source platform is Apache-2.0 and free to self-host. Trigger.dev Cloud has a free tier, with paid plans priced on usage.
n8n gives non-developers a visual canvas with hundreds of connectors. Trigger.dev gives developers code — tasks written in TypeScript inside your repo, with durability and observability handled. Pick by who's building the automation.
Yes — it's one of its main use cases. Durable, no-timeout runs suit long agent loops, with retries for flaky model calls and waitpoints for human approval.
Yes — official Docker/Kubernetes setups run the webapp, worker and Postgres on your infrastructure. Most teams start on the cloud and move in-house when compliance requires.
More open-source picks
Scripts become workflows, cron jobs and internal apps.
Declarative YAML orchestration for data and event pipelines.
MIT-licensed no-code automation with 280+ pieces and AI support.
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