A Temporal alternative with one flat bill and zero replay rules.
Temporal replays your workflow's entire history just to remember where it left off. That's why workflow code has to stay deterministic, and why changing a running workflow means writing versioning logic first, to keep older runs safe. Unmeshed workers are plain functions, with nothing to replay. Temporal Cloud also bills across four separate meters, actions, active storage, retained storage, and a support fee tied to usage.
Unmeshed counts one flat execution number.
Trusted by teams at leading organisations
Overview
Two different paths to durable execution.
About Unmeshed
Unmeshed is a workflow orchestration platform built by the team behind Netflix Conductor. You define workflows in JSON or YAML, with code based workers in Java, Go, TypeScript, or Python. Retries, waits, and durable state come built in, and every step, code or AI, runs with its own visible cost.
About Temporal
Temporal is an open source durable execution platform, run as Temporal Cloud or self-hosted. Workflow code is written directly in Temporal's SDKs and has to stay deterministic, since workers replay event history to reconstruct state after a failure. Production Temporal Cloud usage bills across actions, storage, and capacity, and self-hosted deployments run a separate database alongside Elasticsearch or OpenSearch for visibility.
Comparison
Unmeshed vs Temporal.
| Unmeshed | Temporal | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | ||
| Built for | Code-first orchestration for developers and technical teams | Durable execution for long running, fault tolerant application code |
| Workflow definitions | JSON, YAML, or code | Code only, must stay deterministic since workers replay event history |
| SDK languages | Java, Go, TypeScript, Python, C# and Rust coming | Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, .NET, PHP, Rust |
| Human in the loop | Built in approval and manual intervention steps | Modeled with signals and application code around workflows |
| Visual designer | Included | Not included |
| Resiliency and operations | ||
| Change workflow code without versioning logic | Included | Not included |
| Hold, skip, rollback, retry, restart as direct commands | Included | |
| Self-host without a separate search index | Included | Not included |
| Self-hosted deployment | Included | Included |
| Pricing | ||
| Billing dimensions to track | One, workflow executions | Four, actions, active storage, retained storage, support fee |
| Support fee tied to a percentage of usage | Not included | Included |
| Free tier usable in production | Included | Not included |
| Upgrade without a sales call | Included | |
| Security, compliance, and governance | ||
| Role-based access control | Included | Included |
| SSO / SAML | Included | Included |
| Audit logs | Included | |
| Self-hosted / on-premise deployment | Included | Included |
Ship durable workflows, not replay logic.
Start building fault tolerant workflows with workers that are just plain functions, on a free tier you sign up for yourself.
Pricing
They track four numbers. You'll only need one.
Temporal Cloud usage bills across actions, active storage, retained storage, and a support fee that's whichever is greater, your plan price or a percentage of usage. Unmeshed counts one flat number, a workflow execution, no matter what the workflow does inside it.
Free forever
For solo builders exploring workflow orchestration.
$0/month
No credit card required
Get Started Free- 2,000 workflow executions / month
- Unlimited steps per workflow
- Community support
Premium
For individuals and small teams ready to orchestrate at scale.
$20/month
Billed monthly, annual saves 2 months
Get Started- 10,000 workflow executions / month
- Batch job scheduling
- Email support
Enterprise
For organizations with scale, compliance, and infrastructure requirements.
Custom pricing
Tailored to your scale and compliance requirements
Contact Sales- Unlimited executions, workflows & seats
- SSO / SAML and RBAC
- Dedicated support with SLAs
Temporal Cloud pricing, for reference
See Temporal's pricing pageEssentials, starting at $100/mo
1M actions, 1GB active storage, 40GB retained storage, audit logging included
Business, starting at $500/mo
2.5M actions, SAML SSO included, SCIM as an add-on
Enterprise, contact sales
10M actions, SCIM included, 24/7 support
Usage beyond plan limits bills separately by action volume, storage, and capacity. New accounts start with $1,000 in free credits. Pricing details change often; confirm current numbers on Temporal's site.
Agentic AI
Every AI step gets its own line item.
Temporal
Temporal's own SDKs run AI use cases as standard workflows and activities, but pricing and cost visibility for those calls isn't part of the platform, that logic is on you to build.
Unmeshed
Unmeshed treats AI calls as workflow steps like any other, code steps run at no additional cost, AI steps get tracked and billed on their own, visible per step as the workflow runs. You can see what a single run costs before it scales to a million of them.
Cost and infrastructure
Day one is the easy part with Temporal.
Temporal
Standing up self-hosted Temporal means deploying a database, Cassandra, MySQL, or Postgres, alongside Elasticsearch or OpenSearch for visibility, then keeping both healthy as they grow. Schema upgrades happen through a separate admin tools image, and event history accumulates over the life of every long running workflow, so retention and archival become an ongoing job, not a one time setup.
Unmeshed
Unmeshed runs on a disk log architecture, so scaling stays a question of compute and storage, not a second database to operate.
Feature comparison
Temporal makes you plan for this. Unmeshed already did.
The stuff you won't have to build yourself.
Self hosting
Run it yourself, without a second database to babysit.
Unmeshed
Self host on your own VM or Kubernetes cluster, or use Unmeshed Cloud. On premise deployment is included on the Enterprise plan.
Temporal
Self-hosted production needs a database, Cassandra, MySQL, or Postgres, plus Elasticsearch or OpenSearch for visibility, deployed and upgraded alongside the core service.
Pricing predictability
Know your bill before the workflow runs.
Unmeshed
Workflow executions are counted flat, no matter how long a workflow runs or how much compute it uses.
Temporal
Temporal Cloud bills across four separate dimensions, actions, active storage, retained storage, and a support fee that's whichever is greater, your plan price or a percentage of usage.
Deterministic code, AI where you need it
Mix plain functions and AI steps in the same workflow.
Unmeshed
Workers are plain functions, no replay rules to write around. AI steps run alongside regular code steps, each with its own visible cost.
Temporal
Workflow code must stay deterministic, since workers replay event history to rebuild state. Changing a running workflow safely means writing versioning or patching logic first.
Human in the loop
Approvals as a built-in step, not a signal you wire up.
Unmeshed
Native waits, approvals, and manual intervention steps, available directly in the workflow definition.
Temporal
Human steps are typically modeled with signals and application code built around the workflow.
Code sample
Just functions, nothing extra to maintain.
Workers are plain functions. Register them, start a process, and the platform takes care of the durable execution machinery, with no determinism rules to code around.
from unmeshed.sdk.configs.client_config import ClientConfig
from unmeshed.sdk.unmeshed_client import UnmeshedClient
from unmeshed.sdk.decorators.worker_function import worker_function
client_config = ClientConfig()
client_config.set_client_id("your-client-id")
client_config.set_auth_token("your-auth-token")
client = UnmeshedClient(client_config)
@worker_function(name="charge-order", namespace="default", max_in_progress=100)
def charge_order(input: OrderInput) -> ChargeResult:
# your business logic — the engine handles
# state, retries, and observability
return charge_card(input)
client.start()Frequently asked questions
Still have questions? Talk to us.