Gearman vs River

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.

River is a background job queue for Go applications, using PostgreSQL or SQLite to store jobs. Its transactional enqueueing keeps a job from running until the database transaction that inserted it has completed. The core set includes isolated queues, unique jobs, prioritization, recurring cron jobs, snoozing, transactional completion, and test helpers. A web interface, pause and resume controls, automatic retries, error reporting, and telemetry integrations support operations. River UI is optional and self-hosted, with no external service dependencies. PostgreSQL is the primary database target; SQLite support is experimental. River Pro adds workflows that split complex work into individually retryable tasks, plus batching, concurrency limits, and ordered job sequences. The free Open Source plan includes the web UI but excludes workflows, concurrency limits, and support. Pro costs $125 a month and includes email support for up to 20 developers. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes email and Slack support, unlimited developers, and access to a SOC 2 report.