# sidequestjs/sidequest

Redis-free background jobs for Node.js. Persist jobs in your existing Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB. A distributed, durable BullMQ alternative with a built-in dashboard.

Repository: https://github.com/sidequestjs/sidequest
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/sidequest
Homepage: https://sidequestjs.com
Language: TypeScript
License: LGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: concurrency, distributed, nodejs, queue, typescript, background-jobs, bullmq-alternative, cron, dashboard, job-queue, mongodb, mysql, no-redis, postgresql, scheduler, sqlite, worker-threads, pg-boss-alternative, redis-free
Last push: 2026-08-26T12:44:21+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 83/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 94, longevity 29
- inputs: {"age_days": 406, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 42, "gap_med": 5, "n_releases_24m": 36}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1011, forks 23 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:13.145578+00:00)

## What it is
Sidequest is a Redis-free background job processor for Node.js that persists jobs in your existing PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB database. It offers distributed, durable job processing with retries, cron scheduling, job uniqueness, worker threads, and a built-in web dashboard, positioning itself as a BullMQ and pg-boss alternative.

## Use cases
- run background jobs in node.js without redis
- schedule cron jobs from a node.js app
- process email sending jobs asynchronously
- replace bullmq with a database-backed queue
- monitor and debug job queues with a web dashboard
- run distributed workers across multiple nodes
- retry failed jobs with exponential backoff

## When to choose
- you already run Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB and want to avoid provisioning Redis
- you need durable, distributed background processing in Node.js with atomic job claiming
- you want built-in cron scheduling, retries, job uniqueness, and a monitoring dashboard
- you want to inspect the queue with plain SQL against your own database

## When to avoid
- your stack runs on Bun or Node.js below 22.6.0
- you need extremely high throughput where Redis-backed queues like BullMQ excel
- you need a battle-tested, years-proven solution for mission-critical workloads
- you require transactional enqueue tied to your database transactions (still on the roadmap)

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: message-queue, scheduling, workflow-automation, cli, monitoring
- domain: backend, developer-tools, databases, web-development
- platform: cli, self-hosted
- tags: job-queue, background-jobs, redis-free, bullmq-alternative, pg-boss-alternative, worker-threads, cron-scheduler, dashboard, typescript, distributed, automation, nodejs, docker

## Member repositories
- sidequestjs/sidequest (main) score 83

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:13.145578+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:11:52.754012+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/sidequestjs/sidequest (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:13.145578+00:00, sha a45a61cc8a71)
  - homepage: https://sidequestjs.com (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:54.167639+00:00, sha 61fa08156504)
  - site_page: https://docs.sidequestjs.com/introduction/why (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:54.170123+00:00, sha 9cbce55020ca)
  - site_page: https://docs.sidequestjs.com/getting-started/quick-start (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:54.171994+00:00, sha 5c613d3242d3)
  - site_page: https://docs.sidequestjs.com/getting-started/installation (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:54.174288+00:00, sha 5926b081d1f9)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/sidequest (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:54.176401+00:00, sha 6cc17d701697)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.