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Developer Tools · head to head

Hookdeck vs Turso

Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit HookdeckFull review
Turso logo

Turso

Databases

SQLite-lineage database platform for running very large numbers of small per-tenant databases, with an MIT-licensed engine.

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Visit TursoFull review

The short version

  • Free plans on both; paid from $39/mo and $4.99/mo.
  • Only Hookdeck lists ingest and persist; only Turso lists per-tenant databases.
  • 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 13 November 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Hookdeck and Turso actually diverge.

Attributes where Hookdeck and Turso differ
AttributeHookdeckTurso
Pricing modelPer month by delivered event countFreemium
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsWeb
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 Turso

  • Per-tenant databases
  • MIT licence
  • Embedded replicas
  • SQLite compatibility
  • HTTP access
  • Branching
  • Point-in-time restore
  • In-process engine

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 Turso
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Turso
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Turso
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Turso

Turso

  • Multi-tenant SaaS where each customer gets their own database for real isolation, per-tenant restore and clean deletionnot Hookdeck
  • Agent or session infrastructure that creates a throwaway database per task and destroys it afterwardsnot Hookdeck
  • Local-first and offline-capable applications where an embedded replica serves reads at file speed and syncs when connectivity returnsnot Hookdeck
  • Embedding a SQLite-compatible engine in a product where the public domain original's closed contribution model is a problemnot 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

Turso

  • SQLite allows one writer per database, so a single tenant's write throughput cannot be scaled horizontally and a busy tenant serialises against itself with no sharding option
  • Per-tenant databases mean per-tenant migrations, so every schema change becomes a fan-out job that must be idempotent and resumable, and multi-database schemas, the feature meant to solve this, is deprecated
  • There are no cross-database queries; ATTACH is deprecated on the cloud, so any report or analytic spanning tenants must be assembled in your application or in a separate warehouse you also operate
  • Data Edge, the multi-region edge replication that was Turso's original positioning, is deprecated, so a large share of the tutorials and articles describing Turso as an edge database describe behaviour you can no longer rely on
  • Three engine lineages share the name, SQLite, the libSQL fork and the Rust rewrite, and the Rust engine is still maturing, so SQLite compatibility needs verifying against your specific pragmas, extensions and query patterns; the cloud already restricts journal_mode and busy_timeout and makes user_version read-only

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

Turso

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 100 databases
    • 5 GB storage
    • 500M monthly rows read
  • Developer$4.99/mo
    • Unlimited databases
    • 9 GB storage
    • 2.5B monthly rows read
  • Scaler$24.92/mo
    • Unlimited databases
    • 24 GB storage
    • 100B monthly rows read
  • Pro$416.58/mo
    • Unlimited databases
    • 50 GB storage
    • 250B monthly rows read

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 Turso if

  • You need per-tenant databases.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want mit licence.
Turso review

Questions people ask

Is Hookdeck or Turso better?
Neither clearly leads. Hookdeck starts at Free and Turso at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Hookdeck or Turso?
Hookdeck starts at Free and Turso at Free.
Does Hookdeck or Turso run on more platforms?
Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. Turso runs on 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 Turso is typically brought in for.
What can Hookdeck do that Turso cannot?
Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations. Turso covers Per-tenant databases, MIT licence, Embedded replicas, SQLite compatibility.

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.

Turso: Is Turso just hosted SQLite?

Not exactly. It hosts databases built on the SQLite lineage: libSQL, an MIT fork of SQLite, and Turso Database, a newer Rust rewrite. The platform adds branching, backups, an HTTP API and programmatic database creation.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

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

Turso: Can I really run a million databases?

That is the design goal and the platform API exists to make provisioning and deletion programmatic. The practical constraints are the ones that come with it: migrations fan out, and nothing can query across databases.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

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

Turso: How do embedded replicas handle read-after-write?

Reads come from the local replica and writes go to the primary, so a read immediately after a write can return stale data unless you wait for a sync. Application code has to account for that rather than assume it.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

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

Turso: What licence is it under?

libSQL and Turso Database are both MIT. Turso Cloud is a commercial managed service built on them, so the engine is genuinely open even though the platform is not.

Turso: Is Turso still an edge database?

No. Data Edge, the multi-region edge replication feature, is deprecated. The current positioning is per-tenant and embedded databases, and older material describing edge replication is out of date.

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