A curated list of Node.js libraries for job processing, task scheduling, cron jobs, and background workers
Node.js applications often need reliable background job processing, especially as projects scale beyond simple request-response patterns. Whether you're building APIs, microservices, or full-stack applications with frameworks like Next.js, job queues and task schedulers become essential infrastructure.
Coming from frameworks like Rails or Django, you might find yourself searching for the equivalent of Sidekiq, Celery, or Active Job. This list covers production-ready solutions for:
- Background job processing - Handle long-running tasks asynchronously without blocking requests
- Task scheduling - Run jobs on schedules using cron syntax or intervals
- Workflow orchestration - Coordinate complex multi-step processes with retries and error handling
- AI/LLM workloads - Process AI inference, embeddings, and agent workflows that require durable execution
- Distributed systems - Scale job processing across multiple servers and workers
All libraries include GitHub star counts and maintenance status to help you choose battle-tested solutions.
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Open-source message broker supporting multiple messaging protocols. Reliable distributed job queuing with acknowledgments, retries, and dead-letter queues. For Node.js, use amqplib client. |
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Open-source microservices orchestration platform for writing durable workflows and long-running processes. Built-in retries, timeouts, and failure handling. For Node.js, use the TypeScript SDK. |
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Open-source backend platform with built-in scheduled functions and cron jobs. Provides real-time database with TypeScript support, automatic job scheduling, and local-first development. Self-hostable to prevent vendor lock-in. |
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Open-source background job framework for TypeScript. Long-running jobs, scheduled tasks, and webhooks with a beautiful developer experience. Self-hostable with built-in dashboard. |
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Language-agnostic persistent background job server from the makers of Sidekiq. Simple, fast job processing with multiple language support including Go, Ruby, Python, and more. For Node.js, use faktory_worker_node. |
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Premium Queue package for handling distributed jobs and messages in Node.js. Built on top of Redis with a focus on performance, stability, and robustness. |
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Durable workflow engine for TypeScript and JavaScript. Event-driven background jobs with scheduling, retries, and built-in observability. Works with serverless functions and supports self-hosting. |
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Cron for Node.js. Parse cron expressions, calculate next execution, and iterate over dates. |
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A simple cron-like job scheduler for Node.js. Schedule tasks using cron syntax without external dependencies. |
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PostgreSQL-based job queue for Node.js. Provides job scheduling, retries, and rate limiting using only PostgreSQL. |
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High performance PostgreSQL-based job queue for Node.js. Optimized for high throughput and low latency. |
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Open-source Workflow Development Kit for building durable, resilient, and observable workflows in JavaScript. Easily add durability and state management to async operations. Build apps and AI agents that can suspend and resume execution. |
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Durable, distributed, and cloud-agnostic queue for Node.js. Supports multiple backends (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB) with modern management UI. Run queues anywhere without vendor lock-in. |
Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to add new libraries to this list.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.