Hatchet
Postgres-backed distributed task queue with durable execution and a real-time dashboard.
why this verdict
Keep it — Anthropic has not replaced it
Anthropic's version overlaps, but does not finish the dev tools job, so this one is still worth keeping open.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Managed queue services and durable execution platforms competing for the same background jobs. Anthropic, November 4, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 1 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Temporal.
- What the call is worth nothing to cancel
- No paid entry tier tracked, so there is no subscription to cancel.
- Threatened by
- Anthropic
- Since
- November 4, 2025
- List price
- free
- Per year
- —
The backstory
Hatchet is a background job runner built on Postgres, so a team that already runs Postgres gets durable queues, retries and fan-out without adding Redis, Celery or a broker. Its category is crowded, but its timing is good: AI workloads are long-running, expensive per call and frequently failing, which is the worst possible fit for a fire-and-forget queue and the best possible case for durable execution with visible retries.
Escape hatches
Hosted durable functions with less infrastructure to run
inngest.com open_in_newHeavier but battle-tested at very large scale
temporal.io open_in_newTypeScript-first background jobs with good DX
trigger.dev open_in_new1 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.
