Softwr

Developer Tools · head to head

Dagger vs Hookdeck

Dagger logo

Dagger

Developer Tools

Programmable CI/CD engine that runs your pipeline as containers on any runner

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Dagger dagger is not a CI provider, so you keep paying for GitHub Actions or GitLab runners underneath it; the Dagger Cloud subscription is an addition to your CI bill, not a replacement for it.; Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • They diverge on capability: Dagger covers Pipelines as code, Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Dagger and Hookdeck actually diverge.

Attributes where Dagger and Hookdeck differ
AttributeDaggerHookdeck
Pricing modelPer month per team for Dagger CloudPer month by delivered event count
PlatformsLinux, macOS, Windows, Self-hostedWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Developer Tools).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Dagger

  • Pipelines as code
  • Local and CI parity
  • Content-addressed caching
  • Dagger Functions and modules
  • CI-provider agnostic
  • Dagger Cloud traces
  • GitHub Checks integration
  • Container-native execution

Only in Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Dagger

  • A platform team maintaining near-identical build YAML across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls insteadnot Hookdeck
  • An engineering organisation migrating off a CI provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migrationnot Hookdeck
  • A team whose engineers waste hours pushing commits to debug CI-only failures and needs to reproduce the exact run locallynot Hookdeck
  • A monorepo where most commits touch a small subset of services and cache-accurate step skipping cuts build minutes materiallynot Hookdeck

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Dagger
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Dagger
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Dagger
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Dagger

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Dagger

  • Dagger is not a CI provider, so you keep paying for GitHub Actions or GitLab runners underneath it; the Dagger Cloud subscription is an addition to your CI bill, not a replacement for it.
  • Writing pipelines in Go or TypeScript raises the barrier to entry: a release engineer who could edit a YAML step now needs to read code, and the people who can fix a broken build shrink to those comfortable with the SDK.
  • The engine runs as a container on the runner and needs a persistent cache volume to deliver its main benefit, so ephemeral CI runners give you correctness without the speed, and provisioning durable cache storage is extra platform work.
  • The Team plan caps at ten users and ten million events per month; an organisation of any size crosses that quickly and moves to Enterprise pricing that is not published, so cost at scale is unknowable up front.
  • The module ecosystem is young and thinly maintained relative to the marketplace of a mature CI provider, so integrations that exist as a one-line Action often have to be written yourself as a Dagger function.

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

Pricing, plan by plan

Dagger

Free
  • IndividualFree
    • One user
    • One million events per month
    • Workflow logs and function call traces
  • Team$50/month
    • Up to ten users
    • Ten million events per month
    • Module insights and module catalogue
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom user and event limits
    • SSO
    • Managed single-tenant deployment

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

Which should you pick?

Choose Dagger if

  • You need pipelines as code.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
  • You also want local and ci parity.
Dagger review

Choose Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck review

Questions people ask

Is Dagger or Hookdeck better?
Neither clearly leads. Dagger starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Dagger or Hookdeck?
Dagger starts at Free and Hookdeck at Free.
Does Dagger or Hookdeck run on more platforms?
Dagger runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Dagger for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Dagger best used for?
Dagger is most often used for a platform team maintaining near-identical build yaml across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls instead, an engineering organisation migrating off a ci provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migration, a team whose engineers waste hours pushing commits to debug ci-only failures and needs to reproduce the exact run locally, a monorepo where most commits touch a small subset of services and cache-accurate step skipping cuts build minutes materially. Of those, a platform team maintaining near-identical build yaml across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls instead and an engineering organisation migrating off a ci provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migration are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
What can Dagger do that Hookdeck cannot?
Dagger covers Pipelines as code, Local and CI parity, Content-addressed caching, Dagger Functions and modules. Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Dagger: Does Dagger replace GitHub Actions?

No. Dagger runs inside GitHub Actions or any other CI. It replaces the YAML that describes your pipeline steps, not the trigger and runner layer.

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

Dagger: Is the engine open source?

Yes, the Dagger engine and SDKs are open source and free. Dagger Cloud, the observability product, is what costs money.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

Dagger: What is an event in the pricing?

Dagger Cloud meters pipeline telemetry events. One million per month is free; the Team plan at 50 USD per month allows ten million.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

Dagger: Can I run the same pipeline on my laptop?

Yes, that is the main reason teams adopt it. The dagger CLI executes the identical graph locally, so CI-only failures become reproducible.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

Share

Related pages

More on Dagger

More on Hookdeck

Keep looking

Other head to heads