Temporal Cloud vs AWS Step Functions Cost Calculator

// order-fulfillment-workflow.ts - Durable, resilient code execution
import { proxyActivities, sleep } from '@temporalio/workflow';
import type * as activities from './activities';

const { chargeCreditCard, reserveInventory, dispatchCarrierNotification } = 
  proxyActivities({
    startToCloseTimeout: '1 minute',
    retry: { initialInterval: '1s', maximumAttempts: 5 }
  });

export async function orderFulfillmentWorkflow(orderId: string, amount: number): Promise {
  // Step 1: Charge customer (Consumes 1 Temporal Action)
  await chargeCreditCard(orderId, amount);

  // Step 2: Reserve warehouse inventory (Consumes 1 Action)
  await reserveInventory(orderId);

  // Durable timer survives server restarts with ZERO compute overhead
  await sleep('2 hours');

  // Step 3: Dispatch shipping confirmation (Consumes 1 Action)
  await dispatchCarrierNotification(orderId);
  return 'ORDER_COMPLETED';
}

Temporal Cloud Architecture: Actions, Active Storage & Durable Execution TCO

Temporal provides a durable execution runtime that guarantees reliable completion of long-running workflows (multi-agent AI orchestration, distributed payment transactions, SaaS provisioning). Temporal Cloud pricing is based on two primary dimensions: Actions ($25 per 1 million actions) and Active Storage ($0.042 per GB-month of workflow history) with a $200/month minimum namespace commitment. Self-hosting Temporal requires maintaining a Cassandra/Postgres cluster and Elasticsearch cluster, making Temporal Cloud significantly cheaper for organizations with under 200 million actions monthly.

Production Pipeline: Action-Conserving Workflow Definition in TypeScript

In Temporal, every timer event, activity completion, and signal generates an Action. Batching related operations within a single activity prevents unnecessary action billing:

import { proxyActivities, sleep } from '@temporalio/workflow';
import type * as activities from './activities';

const { processAgentToolBatch } = proxyActivities({
  startToCloseTimeout: '5 minutes',
  retry: { maximumAttempts: 3 }
});

export async function autonomousAgentWorkflow(taskList: string[]): Promise {
  // BAD: Invoking 50 individual activities = 50 actions ($0.00125)
  // GOOD: Batching tasks into a single composite activity = 1 action
  const batchResult = await processAgentToolBatch(taskList);
  
  if (!batchResult.completed) {
    // Durable asynchronous sleep: counts as 1 action in Temporal Cloud
    await sleep('1 hour');
  }
}

Production Best Practices & Storage Optimization

• Set Aggressive Retention Windows: Completed workflows retain execution history in Active Storage. Setting namespace retention from 30 days down to 3 days slashes storage billing by 90% without losing debugging utility.
• Continue-As-New for Perpetual Workflows: Workflows with histories exceeding 10,000 events encounter performance throttling and excessive storage weight. Use `continueAsNew` to roll state forward into a fresh history.
• Compress Activity Payloads: Temporal encrypts and stores inputs/outputs in history. Avoid passing multi-megabyte PDF documents directly through workflow parameters; pass signed S3 object keys instead.