Trigger.dev

An open-source platform for building and deploying fully-managed AI agents and long-running workflows in TypeScript, with durable task execution, automatic retries, queues, human-in-the-loop pauses, and full observability.

Evaluated Mar 06, 2026 (0d ago) vlatest
Homepage ↗ Repo ↗ Other ai-agents workflows typescript background-jobs durable-execution self-hostable open-source
⚙ Agent Friendliness
60
/ 100
Can an agent use this?
🔒 Security
85
/ 100
Is it safe for agents?
⚡ Reliability
80
/ 100
Does it work consistently?

Score Breakdown

⚙ Agent Friendliness

MCP Quality
0
Documentation
82
Error Messages
78
Auth Simplicity
82
Rate Limits
78

🔒 Security

TLS Enforcement
100
Auth Strength
82
Scope Granularity
78
Dep. Hygiene
85
Secret Handling
82

Background job/workflow platform. API key + secret key pair. Self-hostable for sensitive workflows. Environment variables for secrets in tasks. SOC2 in progress.

⚡ Reliability

Uptime/SLA
82
Version Stability
80
Breaking Changes
78
Error Recovery
80
AF Security Reliability

Best When

You are building AI agents or workflows in TypeScript that need to run longer than serverless limits allow, with production-grade reliability, retries, and observability built in.

Avoid When

Your workflows are short-lived and simple enough for standard serverless functions, or your team works exclusively in non-TypeScript languages.

Use Cases

  • • Building AI agents that need to run for minutes or hours without serverless function timeouts
  • • Durable multi-step AI workflows with automatic retry on failure and human approval gates
  • • Scheduled AI tasks (cron) running up to yearly intervals
  • • Batch AI processing pipelines with queue management and concurrency control
  • • AI workflows requiring custom system packages, browser automation, or Python script execution

Not For

  • • Simple webhook receivers or short-lived API handlers (overkill for sub-second tasks)
  • • Teams needing a no-code workflow builder (Trigger.dev is code-first TypeScript)
  • • Non-TypeScript/JavaScript projects without willingness to add a Node.js component

Interface

REST API
Yes
GraphQL
No
gRPC
No
MCP Server
No
SDK
Yes
Webhooks
Yes

Authentication

Methods: api-key
OAuth: No Scopes: No

Project-scoped API keys for triggering tasks and accessing the management API. React hooks provide frontend integration patterns.

Pricing

Model: freemium
Free tier: Yes
Requires CC: No

Apache 2.0 licensed. Cloud version has free tier. Self-hosting is fully supported.

Agent Metadata

Pagination
cursor
Idempotent
Yes
Retry Guidance
Documented

Known Gotchas

  • ⚠ Not an MCP server itself - it is an agent/workflow execution platform that agents are built on top of
  • ⚠ TypeScript/JavaScript only SDK - not suitable for Python or other language agent stacks without a wrapper
  • ⚠ Self-hosting requires non-trivial infrastructure setup (Docker/Kubernetes)
  • ⚠ Human-in-the-loop workflows require the frontend React hooks integration for approval UI
  • ⚠ Task runs are limited to 10 tags for filtering - may be limiting for complex multi-tenant setups

Alternatives

Inngest Temporal Prefect Dagster Modal AWS Step Functions

Full Evaluation Report

Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Trigger.dev.

$99
API endpoint ↗ Agent guide ↗ Report inaccuracy

Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.

5173
Packages Evaluated
26151
Need Evaluation
173
Need Re-evaluation
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