Compare

Temporal vs Trigger.dev

Trigger.dev scores higher on the AgentReady, 60/100 against 46/100. They differ on 6 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Temporal. Temporal is an open-source platform for building applications with durable execution, used by companies like OpenAI, Lovable, Replit, Cursor, and Retool to add agentic capabilities to applications.

Trigger.dev. Trigger.dev is an open source background jobs framework and platform for building AI workflows in TypeScript.

Where Temporal is ahead

Temporal passes free trial or free allowance, and Trigger.dev does not. That is adopt, whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop.

Where Trigger.dev is ahead

Trigger.dev passes clear product positioning and mcp discoverable, and Temporal does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: limits / constraints documented. Temporal misses it.

And on adopt, official python sdk and mcp integration available. Temporal misses those.

What neither does

Both fail structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Trigger.dev leads 100 to 73. Temporal misses clear product positioning, mcp discoverable; Trigger.dev misses nothing.

Understand. Trigger.dev leads 38 to 31. Temporal misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Trigger.dev misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt. Trigger.dev leads 65 to 45. Temporal misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, official python sdk, mcp integration available; Trigger.dev misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance.

Operate. Both sit at 35/100 here. Temporal misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Trigger.dev misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Temporal starts at $100/mo and has a free tier. Trigger.dev does not publish one.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Trigger.dev clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Temporal and Trigger.dev. Alternatives to each: Temporal, Trigger.dev.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["temporal", "trigger"]}