Gearman vs Hangfire
Gearman
gearman.orgHangfire
hangfire.ioSide by side
| Figure | Gearman | Hangfire |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $41.67/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 4 |
| Spec score · Task Queue Software | 8.8 (#4) | 9.1 (#2) |
| Documentation depth | The documentation site includes getting started material, a manual, protocol specifications, generated gearmand documentation, libgearman references, install guides, SSL instructions, and changelogs. | The documentation includes getting-started guides, installation, ASP.NET Core setup, dashboard authorization, storage configuration and deployment guidance. |
| Licence | The project describes itself as open source and BSD licensed; the C server and libgearman are specifically identified as BSD licensed. | Hangfire Core is open source under LGPLv3, with commercial licensing available for private forks and modifications. |
| What it does | Gearman distributes work to other machines or processes for parallel execution, load balancing, and cross-language function calls. | Hangfire runs .NET and .NET Core methods as durable background jobs without requiring a separate Windows Service or process. |
Plans
In their own words
Gearman
Gearman is a free, self-hosted application framework for distributing work across machines or processes. A client submits jobs, a job server routes them, and a worker performs them, allowing parallel processing and load balancing. Jobs can run asynchronously in the background or receive priorities. Clients and workers may use different language interfaces when they understand the workload; listed interfaces include C, C#/.NET, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Lisp. Messages can reach 4 GB, with chunking for larger messages. Clients and workers can connect to multiple job servers and fail over when one dies. The C job server supports persistent queues. MySQL and PostgreSQL functions expose client calls to queries, triggers, and stored procedures, while the pure Perl API supports SSL. Gearman runs on Linux and Windows, offers API access, and is licensed under BSD. GearmanSharp is incomplete.
Hangfire
Hangfire runs background jobs in.NET and.NET Core applications without requiring a Windows Service or a separate process. It supports fire-and-forget, delayed and recurring jobs, as well as continuations, and stores jobs persistently. SQL Server and Redis are officially supported storage options, with other community-driven implementations also available. A built-in web dashboard shows processing activity and each job's state. Hangfire describes its processing as at-least-once, with automatic retries after unhandled exceptions or application termination. It can run across multiple machines and coordinates their work automatically. Listed integrations include ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core, console applications, Windows Services, WCF, Nancy and ServiceStack. Hangfire Core is open source under LGPLv3 and free for commercial use. The Open plan is free. Startup costs $500 a year, Business $1,500 a year, and Enterprise $4,500 a year, all billed per organization annually. Pro adds batches and batch continuations; Ace adds throttling features for concurrency and rate limits. Dashboard access is local by default, so remote access needs authorization configuration.