What is Temporal?
Temporal is a server that runs long, multi-step code reliably. You write the agent loop as a Workflow and each model call or tool call as an Activity; the server records every result in an event history. If a worker process dies mid-run, another worker replays that history, skips the steps already done and carries on, so a crash does not mean paying for the same LLM calls twice or sending the same refund again. A run can also wait days for a human approval without holding a process open.
The server is written in Go, MIT-licensed and began as a fork of Uber's Cadence. SDKs cover Go, Java, Python, TypeScript and other languages, and Temporal documents integrations that make agents from the OpenAI Agents SDK, Pydantic AI, LangGraph, Google ADK, the Claude Agent SDK, Strands Agents and the Vercel AI SDK durable with little code change. It is general infrastructure, used for payments and order pipelines long before agents, not an agent framework.
Temporal Cloud is the hosted service from Temporal Technologies, the company behind the project. It bills by Action from $50 per million, plus storage and a support plan, and new accounts get $150 of credits for 90 days.
How much does Temporal cost?
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted server | Free | MIT licence |
| Cloud Developer | $50 per million Actions | Plus 10% of usage for support |
| Cloud Business | $500/month minimum | Or 10% of usage if higher; 2.5M Actions included |
| Cloud Enterprise and Mission Critical | Custom | Priced annually; 10M Actions included |
Server free under MIT. Temporal Cloud: $50 per million Actions, falling in tiers to $25 per million between 100M and 200M on Business and above; active storage $0.042/GBh, retained $0.00105/GBh. Developer plan adds 10% of usage; Business is the greater of $500/month or 10% of usage, with 2.5M Actions included; Enterprise and Mission Critical priced annually by sales. $150 free credits for 90 days.
Is Temporal worth it?
Temporal is the strongest case for durable execution underneath a production agent, and its integrations now make that cheap to adopt. The OpenAI Agents SDK, Pydantic AI, LangGraph, Google ADK, the Claude Agent SDK and the Vercel AI SDK all have documented Temporal integrations. The server has about 24,300 GitHub stars and shipped v1.32.2 on 2 November 2026.
The agent integrations hide most of the machinery. With the OpenAI Agents SDK package (temporalio-openai-agents 1.1.0, Python 3.10 or later), the agent loop, tool choice and handoffs run inside the Workflow and the plugin turns each model call into an Activity, so ordinary Runner.run code retries durably and is not repeated when a worker replays history. For a refund or provisioning agent, that is the difference between a crash that resumes and a crash that charges a customer twice.
The discipline is the price. Workflow code must be deterministic, so clocks, random numbers and network calls belong in Activities. Each request payload is capped at 2 MB and each workflow history at 51,200 events or 50 MB, with warnings from 10,240 events or 10 MB; an agent that keeps long transcripts or documents in workflow state has to store them elsewhere and pass references. Self-hosting means running the server on Cassandra, PostgreSQL or MySQL (SQLite is for development only), and the security docs warn that without a configured Authorizer the default allows every API request.
Temporal Cloud bills by Action: every workflow start, activity start or retry, timer and signal counts. An agent run with 15 model and tool calls is about 16 Actions, so 100,000 runs a month is roughly 1.6M Actions, or $88 on the Developer plan by our arithmetic from the published rates. Cloud lists SOC 2 and HIPAA, and payloads can be encrypted on the client so the service never sees prompts in clear text.
Much of this is overkill for an agent that finishes inside one HTTP request, where a retry is enough, and LangGraph's own checkpointer already resumes interrupted graphs for teams that use nothing else. Temporal earns its place when runs last minutes to days, touch money or tickets that must not happen twice, or when one platform team has to run agents from several frameworks and languages.
Where it earns its place
A platform engineer at a payments company running a refund agent
Make sure a crash halfway through never refunds a customer twice
Run the agent loop as a Workflow and each payment API call as an Activity with a retry policy; a restarted worker replays history and skips the refund already issued. Self-hosted on PostgreSQL the software is free; the cost is running the cluster and wiring an Authorizer before it is reachable.
An AI engineer whose OpenAI Agents SDK prototype loses work on every deploy
Keep multi-step research runs alive through restarts and rolling deploys
Add the temporalio-openai-agents plugin to the worker and client; Runner.run code stays the same while model calls become Activities. On Temporal Cloud at $50 per million Actions, 100,000 runs of about 16 Actions each come to roughly $88 a month on the Developer plan.
An operations lead at an insurer approving agent-drafted claims letters
Pause an agent until a human signs off, sometimes for days
The workflow waits on a signal with no process held open and resumes when the approver responds; the full history of what the agent did is kept for the namespace's retention period, up to 90 days on Cloud, with export for longer audit trails.
Before you commit
- Setup
- brew install temporal and temporal server start-dev run a local server with a web UI on port 8233 in minutes; production self-hosting needs Cassandra, PostgreSQL or MySQL, optionally Elasticsearch for search, plus your own workers.
- Integrations
- SDKs for Go, Java, Python, TypeScript and more; documented agent integrations for the OpenAI Agents SDK (Python and TypeScript), Pydantic AI, LangGraph, Google ADK, Claude Agent SDK, Strands Agents, Mastra, Spring AI and the Vercel AI SDK.
- Data and privacy
- Self-hosted, all state stays in your database. Temporal Cloud offers namespace isolation, mTLS or API keys, private connectivity, SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA, and client-side payload encryption. GitHub lists no published security advisories for the server repository.
- Cost at scale
- By the published rates, 20M Actions a month on Business is $775 in Actions after the 2.5M included, plus the $500 plan minimum, about $1,275 before storage. Active storage is $0.042 per GB-hour, so keeping large agent state in open workflows costs more than retaining closed ones.
- Limits
- Payloads 2 MB per request, history 51,200 events or 50 MB per workflow, 500 Actions per second by default on Cloud; workflow code must be deterministic. 1,142 open issues and pull requests on the server repository.
What’s good
- Crashed runs resume from the last completed step without repeating model calls
- Documented integrations for the OpenAI Agents SDK, Pydantic AI, LangGraph, Google ADK and more
- MIT-licensed server with a published, per-Action cloud price
- Client-side payload encryption keeps prompts unreadable to Temporal Cloud
What’s not
- Workflow code must be deterministic, which trips up new users
- 2 MB payload and 51,200-event history limits bite on long agent sessions
- Self-hosted server allows every API request until you configure an Authorizer
- Business support costs at least $500 a month
Best for
Teams running agents that last minutes to days, wait on people, or take actions that must not be repeated after a crash.
Temporal alternatives
Temporal: common questions
- Is Temporal worth it?
- Temporal is the safest place to run an agent whose half-finished work would be expensive to lose, provided you accept its rules about what may run inside a workflow. We rate it 4.5 out of 5.
- How much does Temporal cost?
- Server free under MIT. Temporal Cloud: $50 per million Actions, falling in tiers to $25 per million between 100M and 200M on Business and above; active storage $0.042/GBh, retained $0.00105/GBh. Developer plan adds 10% of usage; Business is the greater of $500/month or 10% of usage, with 2.5M Actions included; Enterprise and Mission Critical priced annually by sales. $150 free credits for 90 days.
- What are the downsides of Temporal?
- Workflow code must be deterministic, which trips up new users; 2 MB payload and 51,200-event history limits bite on long agent sessions; self-hosted server allows every API request until you configure an Authorizer; business support costs at least $500 a month.
- Who is Temporal best for?
- Teams running agents that last minutes to days, wait on people, or take actions that must not be repeated after a crash.
- How much does Temporal cost for a team or in production?
- By the published rates, 20M Actions a month on Business is $775 in Actions after the 2.5M included, plus the $500 plan minimum, about $1,275 before storage. Active storage is $0.042 per GB-hour, so keeping large agent state in open workflows costs more than retaining closed ones.
- Is Temporal safe for company data?
- Self-hosted, all state stays in your database. Temporal Cloud offers namespace isolation, mTLS or API keys, private connectivity, SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA, and client-side payload encryption. GitHub lists no published security advisories for the server repository.
- What are the best Temporal alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Dapr, LangGraph and OpenAI Agents SDK.
Answers checked Nov 9, 2026.
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