Temporal vs Apollo GraphQL Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Temporal pricing | Apollo GraphQL pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $25/mo | $5/mo |
| Number of plans | 4 | 4 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Price is one row. To weigh the features too, use our feature comparison template →
Pay-As-You-Go
- No base monthly fee
- $0.042/GBhr Active Storage
- $0.00105/GBhr Retained Storage
- Developer support for 10% of usage
- 99.9% SLA and 99.99% HA Options
- SSO via SAML
Volume Discounts
Business
- 2 Hour P0 SLA Business Hours
- Advanced Technical Support
- Price: Greater of $500/mo or 10% of usage
- Progressive Discounts or Commitments
- 2.5M Actions
- 2.5M GB Active Storage
- 100 GB Retained Storage
Enterprise and Mission Critical
- 30 Min P0 SLA 24/7
- 15 Min with Mission Critical
- Advanced Technical Support, Optimization and Code Reviews
- Dedicated Platform Architect with Mission Critical
- Progressive Discounts or Commitments
- Private Slack
- 10M Actions
- 10M GB Active Storage
- 400 GB Retained Storage
- SCIM
Free
- GraphOS - Apollo's complete API management platform
- Supports any GraphQL API
- Self-hosted GraphOS Router (limited to 60 requests per minute)
- Built-in support for GraphQL Federation, Connectors, Response Caching, Federated Subscriptions, and more.
Developer
- GraphOS - Apollo's complete API management platform
- Supports any GraphQL API
- Self-hosted GraphOS Router
- Built-in support for GraphQL Federation, Connectors, Response Caching, Federated Subscriptions, and more.
Standard
- GraphOS - Apollo's complete API management platform
- Supports any GraphQL API
- Self-hosted GraphOS Router
- Built-in support for GraphQL Federation, Connectors, Response Caching, Federated Subscriptions, and more.
- Schema Proposals - Collaboration and approval workflows
- Single sign-on (SSO)
Enterprise
- GraphOS - Apollo's complete API management platform
- Supports any GraphQL API
- Self-hosted GraphOS Router
- Built-in support for GraphQL Federation, Connectors, Response Caching, Federated Subscriptions, and more.
- Schema Proposals - Collaboration and approval workflows
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- Audit logging
- Custom MSA
- (Add-on) Premium Support Packages
- (Add-on) Professional Services Packages
Temporal vs Apollo GraphQL FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Apollo GraphQL is the cheaper option, starting at $5/mo vs $25/mo for Temporal.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Apollo GraphQL has a free plan. Temporal doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Temporal: Sitting in the middle-to-premium zone for workflow orchestration — cheaper to start than committing to a big enterprise contract, but the usage-based model means costs scale fast once you're running production-grade action volume. They're clearly hunting teams already sold on Temporal's durable execution model, not price-shopping newcomers comparing raw compute costs. Apollo GraphQL: Apollo sits in the middle-to-premium zone — cheap to start (basically free until you're pushing real traffic), but as the go-to GraphQL federation layer, they can charge a premium once you're locked into their supergraph tooling. They're not competing on price so much as on being the default infrastructure choice for teams already running GraphQL at scale.
Still deciding? See the best Temporal alternatives or the best Apollo GraphQL alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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