I Removed Redis From My Stack and Used PostgreSQL for Job Queues Instead

Every Node.js project eventually needs background jobs. Send this email. Process this file. Run this alert evaluation at midnight. The default answer in the ecosystem is Redis + BullMQ. It's fast, battle-tested, and has a great API. It also means running Redis. For projects already running PostgreSQL, that's a second database to provision, monitor, back up, and pay for. On AWS, an ElastiCache instance starts at ~$15/month for the smallest node not catastrophic, but not nothing either. More importantly, it's another moving part that can fail. I recently shipped a Redis-free deployment mode for an open-source project I maintain. The job queue runs entirely on PostgreSQL using graphile-worker . Here's everything I learned from the experience what graphile-worker does well, where it has real limits, and when you should just keep Redis. The Problem With "Just Add Redis" Before getting into the comparison, it's worth being honest about what the Redis dependency actually costs. Operationally