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Developer Tools · head to head

Hookdeck vs RisingWave

Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit HookdeckFull review
RisingWave logo

RisingWave

Databases

Streaming database that maintains incremental materialised views in SQL instead of Flink jobs

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit RisingWaveFull review

The short version

  • Free plans on both; paid from $39/mo and $0.227/mo.
  • Only Hookdeck lists ingest and persist; only RisingWave lists SQL materialised views.
  • Where Hookdeck falls short: pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Prices and features on this page were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Hookdeck and RisingWave actually diverge.

Attributes where Hookdeck and RisingWave differ
AttributeHookdeckRisingWave
Pricing modelPer month by delivered event countPer RisingWave Unit hour
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsLinux, Self-hosted, Web
CategoryDeveloper ToolsDatabases

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes).

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 Hookdeck

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

Only in RisingWave

  • SQL materialised views
  • Postgres wire compatibility
  • Object storage state
  • Source connectors
  • Sink connectors
  • Iceberg tables
  • Watermarks and windowing
  • User defined functions

What people use each for

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

Hookdeck

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

RisingWave

  • A team with Kafka topics that needs continuously fresh aggregates for a dashboard without standing up a Flink clusternot Hookdeck
  • A fraud or risk team maintaining rolling counters and joins across event streams expressed as SQL viewsnot Hookdeck
  • A company doing Postgres CDC into a real-time denormalised view for search or servingnot Hookdeck
  • An analytics group that wants streaming results landed directly into Apache Iceberg without a separate writer jobnot Hookdeck

Where each one falls short

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

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

RisingWave

  • Anything that does not fit SQL, such as custom windowing, complex event processing or heavy stateful logic, still needs Flink, so RisingWave often adds a system rather than removing one
  • The Apache 2.0 community edition excludes premium features behind a licence key, and which capabilities sit on which side of that line moves between releases, so a self-hosted plan can be invalidated by an upgrade
  • Long-running materialised views accumulate state in object storage, and cost and recovery time grow with retention in ways that are hard to forecast before you are in production
  • The Postgres compatibility is protocol level; it is not a transactional Postgres and using it as a general purpose database, with point updates or high write concurrency, goes badly
  • It is a comparatively young venture-funded project competing with Flink, Materialize and warehouse-native streaming, and the ecosystem of connectors, operators and third-party expertise is much thinner

Pricing, plan by plan

Hookdeck

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

RisingWave

Free
  • Community EditionFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence, self-hosted
    • Core streaming engine and connectors
    • Premium features excluded and require a licence key
  • Cloud Basic$0.227/hour
    • Billed per RisingWave Unit hour
    • Hosted on AWS, GCP or Azure
    • Capped at 64 cores
  • Cloud ProOn request
    • No core limit
    • Bring your own cloud option
    • Premium features included
  • Self-managed EnterpriseOn request
    • On premises or Kubernetes
    • Premium features unlocked by licence
    • Annual contract with SLA

Which should you pick?

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

Choose RisingWave if

  • You need sql materialised views.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Self-hosted, Web.
  • You also want postgres wire compatibility.
RisingWave review

Questions people ask

Is Hookdeck or RisingWave better?
Neither clearly leads. Hookdeck starts at Free and RisingWave at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Hookdeck or RisingWave?
Hookdeck starts at Free and RisingWave at Free.
Does Hookdeck or RisingWave run on more platforms?
Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. RisingWave runs on Linux, Self-hosted, Web.
Can I use Hookdeck for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Hookdeck best used for?
Hookdeck is most often used for a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled, fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately, debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fix, receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnel. Of those, a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled and fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately are not what RisingWave is typically brought in for.
What can Hookdeck do that RisingWave cannot?
Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations. RisingWave covers SQL materialised views, Postgres wire compatibility, Object storage state, Source connectors.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

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

RisingWave: Is RisingWave open source?

The community edition is Apache 2.0 and self-hostable, but a set of premium features requires a paid licence key.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

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

RisingWave: What does the cloud cost?

It starts at 0.227 US dollars per RisingWave Unit hour on the Basic tier, which is capped at 64 cores.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

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

RisingWave: Does it replace Flink?

For SQL-expressible transformations, often yes. For custom stateful processing and complex event handling, no.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

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

RisingWave: Can I query it like Postgres?

Yes over the Postgres wire protocol, but it is an analytical streaming engine, not a transactional database.

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