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Managed task queue with HTTP push delivery · by Google Cloud

Google Cloud Tasks

Google Cloud's managed task queue that pushes each task to an HTTP endpoint or App Engine with retries, rate limits and scheduling, with 1 million free operations a month.

Visit cloud.google.com ↗ Alternatives Free tier EU region
Google Cloud Tasks homepage
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Overview

Cloud Tasks is a managed queue for discrete units of work. Your app creates a task naming a target (an HTTP URL, often Cloud Run or Cloud Functions, or an App Engine handler) and Cloud Tasks delivers it, retrying with backoff on failure and respecting the queue's rate and concurrency limits. Tasks can be scheduled for a future time and deduplicated by name.

Pricing is simple: the first 1 million billable operations a month are free, then $0.40 per million up to 5 billion. Both API calls and push delivery attempts count, including retries, and payloads are chunked at 32 KB.

Compared with Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks gives explicit control over delivery rate and per-task scheduling; compared with job frameworks, it has no workflow steps or dashboard of results, so multi-step processes need Cloud Workflows or your own code.

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Pricing and plans

Free tier · card required

First 1 million billable operations (API calls and push delivery attempts) each month

At the limit Bills overage Operations past the free million are billed at $0.40 per million to your billing account.

Plan Price What you get
First 1M operations Free Per month
Up to 5 billion operations $0.40 per million Chunked at 32 KB
Over 5 billion Custom Contact sales

A billable operation is an API call or a push delivery attempt, so retries are billed. Tasks are chunked at 32 KB: a 96 KB task is 3 operations. Calls that act on several tasks count once per task (a list returning 25 tasks is 25 operations), and every call is at least one operation. Tasks failing from Google infrastructure errors are not billed. Network costs apply to HTTP target tasks, and the handler's compute (Cloud Run, Functions) is billed separately.

Source: cloud.google.com/tasks/pricing · prices as published, excluding tax.

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What it does

HTTP push delivery
Tasks are delivered to any HTTP endpoint or App Engine, with optional OIDC or OAuth tokens for authenticated targets.
Rate and concurrency control
Each queue sets maximum dispatches per second and concurrent dispatches.
Retries with backoff
Configurable retry attempts, durations and backoff per queue.
Scheduled tasks
Set a schedule time to deliver a task in the future.
Task deduplication
Named tasks prevent the same task being created twice.
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Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • 1 million free operations every month
  • Push model works with serverless handlers on Cloud Run
  • Per-queue rate limiting protects downstream services
  • Regional queues, including EU regions

Limitations

  • Every delivery attempt, including retries, is billed
  • Payloads are billed per 32 KB chunk
  • HTTP handlers must respond within 10 minutes by default, 30 minutes at most
  • No workflow steps, result storage or run dashboard
  • Tied to Google Cloud
  • At-least-once delivery, so handlers must be idempotent
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Who it suits

Good for

  • Cloud Run or App Engine apps offloading slow work
  • Rate-limited calls to third-party APIs
  • Delayed one-off tasks

Look elsewhere if

  • Multi-step durable workflows
  • Apps not on Google Cloud that want an integrated job dashboard
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Alternatives to Google Cloud Tasks

Tool From Free option Stages
Sidekiq Redis-based background job library for Ruby
$99/mo Open source
Hangfire Background job library for .NET
$500/yr Open source
Windmill Open-source job orchestrator, workflow engine and internal-tool platform
$10/mo Free tier
Oban SQL-backed job processing library for Elixir (and Python)
$135/mo Open source
Celery Distributed task queue for Python
— Open source
DBOS Postgres-backed durable workflow library
$99/mo Open source

All background jobs, queues and workflows →

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Questions

Is Google Cloud Tasks free?

The first 1 million billable operations each month are free; after that it is $0.40 per million.

What counts as a Cloud Tasks operation?

Any API call or push delivery attempt, chunked at 32 KB of payload, so retries and large tasks count more than once.

Cloud Tasks or Pub/Sub?

Cloud Tasks gives per-task scheduling and explicit delivery rate control to one handler; Pub/Sub is for broadcasting events to many subscribers.

Can Cloud Tasks schedule a task for later?

Yes. Each task can have a schedule time for future delivery.

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