Trigger.dev vs Zapier
Both are automation tools. Here is what separates them.
| Trigger.dev | Zapier | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Automation | Automation |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Price from | Freemium | Freemium |
| Upvotes | 8 | 8 |
| What it does | Long-running background jobs in your own codebase, with retries that work. | Connect two apps that were never going to integrate on their own. |
What Trigger.dev is
Trigger.dev runs long-running background jobs written in your own codebase, without you managing the servers they run on. It is for the work that does not fit in a web request: sending an email campaign, processing video, running a compute-heavy job, or anything that takes longer than a serverless function will allow. The central claim is that tasks have no timeouts. A job can run indefinitely, and a Checkpoint-Resume system means a long task can be suspended and picked up again rather than restarted from the beginning. Every task can be retried on failure, which is the part most homegrown queue setups get wrong. Concurrency is controlled with custom rules, so one noisy job cannot starve the rest, and tasks can be triggered in batches. Because tasks are code in your repository, they are version-controlled like the rest of it. They can be run and tested locally before anything is deployed, then deployed to staging or production, across multiple regions including AWS US West in Oregon. Python scripts can be executed alongside the JavaScript. Human-in-the-loop workflows are supported for jobs that need somebody to approve a step partway through. Operationally it provides queues, logging, tracing and observability, so a failed run can be traced rather than guessed at, and there is a CLI command that reports on health. The dashboard can be customised, including the side menu, and several profiles can be kept for managing more than one account. Plans are drawn on concurrent runs rather than task counts. Free allows 20 concurrent runs, Hobby 50, and Pro 200 with the option to buy additional bundles; Enterprise is custom priced with a configurable ceiling. Pro adds dedicated Slack support. Every plan is limited to 1,500 API requests per minute. Trigger.dev can also be self-hosted, which matters for teams whose jobs touch data that cannot leave their own infrastructure.
What Zapier is
Zapier is an automation service that connects separate apps so an event in one triggers actions in another. Those workflows are called Zaps, and they sit alongside Tables, Forms, Chatbots, Agents and Canvas in the product line. The app directory lists more than 10,000 connected apps, and Agents can be grounded on uploaded FAQs, docs and public links. Billing runs on tasks, and what counts as a task is narrower than it first looks. Trigger steps never consume tasks, even though polling can run many thousands of checks a month. Filter and Paths steps, failed or halted actions, and Formatter, Delay, Looping, Digest, Storage and Zapier Manager steps also consume none. Some features cost more than one: Zapier MCP consumes 2 tasks for each successful tool call, and Lead Router consumes 5 for each lead routed successfully. The free plan includes 100 tasks a month, limits a Zap to two steps and checks for new data every 15 minutes. Professional shortens that check to 2 minutes, and Team and Enterprise to 1 minute. Other limits move with the plan in the same way: Tables hold 2,500 records on Free, 100,000 on Professional and 500,000 on Team, Agents allow 400 activities a month on Free and 1,500 on Professional and Team, and Code by Zapier gets 1 second of runtime on Free, 30 seconds on Professional and Team and 2 minutes on Enterprise. Paid pricing is tiered by task volume rather than sold as a flat seat price. Professional covers one user and, billed annually, costs 19.99 USD a month for 750 tasks, 49.00 USD for 2,000 tasks and 129.00 USD for 10,000 tasks; the monthly-billed equivalents are 29.99, 73.50 and 193.50 USD. Team covers 25 users at 69.00 USD a month for 2,000 tasks or 169.00 USD for 10,000, billed annually. Annual billing costs 33% less than monthly, and non-profits receive a further 15% discount, which does not apply to pay-per-task billing. Professional comes with a 14-day free trial. On the security side, Zapier is hosted on Amazon Web Services in the United States, encrypts data at rest with AES-256 and web application traffic with TLS 1.2 or above, holds SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 certifications, and maintains GDPR and CCPA compliance. Accounts support two-factor authentication, and SAML single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and domain capture are available.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.