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Faktory
Reliable background jobs for any language, over one protocol
Faktory is an open-source background job server by Mike Perham, the creator of Sidekiq. Producers push jobs as JSON and workers fetch them over a small protocol, so any language can use it: official Ruby and Go clients, community ones for Python, Node, PHP, Rust, Elixir, Java,NET and more. A fetched job is reserved, not removed: if a worker crashes, it comes back. Failures retry with backoff, then land in a Dead set you can re-run. Web UI included.
Hunting this one for its design, not because it's new: it's been around since 2017 and v1.10.0 shipped in August. I'm an engineer who's read through the docs and the protocol spec more than once, and I still think it's one of the cleanest job servers there is.
The core idea: Faktory is a server, not a library. Producers PUSH JSON jobs, workers FETCH them, over a small text protocol (FWP, port 7419) that anything can speak. Ruby and Go clients are official; the community covers Python, Node, PHP, Rust, Elixir, Java, .NET and more. One queue can sit between very different codebases without a shared client library.
The design choice I admire most is that a fetched job isn't a removed job. It's reserved (30 minutes by default) until the worker ACKs or FAILs it, so a crashed worker just lets the reservation lapse and the job comes back. Failures retry 25 times by default, with a growing, jittered backoff over roughly three weeks, then go to a dead set you can inspect and re-run from the UI once you've shipped the fix. That's at-least-once delivery, so write idempotent handlers, but the failure behavior is written down and predictable, and that's most of what you want from a queue.
Two more things I like: the Web UI ships with the server (queues, busy workers, retries, dead jobs), and the open-source/Enterprise line is easy to read. The AGPL core covers the queue, retries and UI; cron, unique and expiring jobs, batches and throttling are the paid Enterprise edition, from $299/mo, with no licence needed in development.
All credit to Mike Perham and contribsys, the same person who wrote Sidekiq — he's here as the maker, so questions about the roadmap or Enterprise are best asked of him. I'm not affiliated with Faktory or contribsys, just a fan of the design. Curious what people here use for crashed-worker semantics today.
The reservation model is the part that stands out to me — a crashed worker not losing the job makes the failure case much easier to reason about. For a job that legitimately runs longer than the 30-minute reservation, is there a way for the worker to extend it, or is the expectation to break the work into smaller jobs?
the reservation model makes the failure case easy to reason about
a worker disappearing should not mean the job disappears too keeping the retry and dead job views in the same ui helps
About Faktory on Product Hunt
“Reliable background jobs for any language, over one protocol”
Faktory was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 6 upvotes and 4 comments, placing #37 on the daily leaderboard. Faktory is an open-source background job server by Mike Perham, the creator of Sidekiq. Producers push jobs as JSON and workers fetch them over a small protocol, so any language can use it: official Ruby and Go clients, community ones for Python, Node, PHP, Rust, Elixir, Java,NET and more. A fetched job is reserved, not removed: if a worker crashes, it comes back. Failures retry with backoff, then land in a Dead set you can re-run. Web UI included.
Faktory was featured in Open Source (69.1k followers), Software Engineering (43.3k followers) and Developer Tools (523.1k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 120.7k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Faktory?
Faktory was hunted by Max Zhuk. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Max Zhuk
Hunting this one for its design, not because it's new: it's been around since 2017 and v1.10.0 shipped in August. I'm an engineer who's read through the docs and the protocol spec more than once, and I still think it's one of the cleanest job servers there is.
The core idea: Faktory is a server, not a library. Producers PUSH JSON jobs, workers FETCH them, over a small text protocol (FWP, port 7419) that anything can speak. Ruby and Go clients are official; the community covers Python, Node, PHP, Rust, Elixir, Java, .NET and more. One queue can sit between very different codebases without a shared client library.
The design choice I admire most is that a fetched job isn't a removed job. It's reserved (30 minutes by default) until the worker ACKs or FAILs it, so a crashed worker just lets the reservation lapse and the job comes back. Failures retry 25 times by default, with a growing, jittered backoff over roughly three weeks, then go to a dead set you can inspect and re-run from the UI once you've shipped the fix. That's at-least-once delivery, so write idempotent handlers, but the failure behavior is written down and predictable, and that's most of what you want from a queue.
Two more things I like: the Web UI ships with the server (queues, busy workers, retries, dead jobs), and the open-source/Enterprise line is easy to read. The AGPL core covers the queue, retries and UI; cron, unique and expiring jobs, batches and throttling are the paid Enterprise edition, from $299/mo, with no licence needed in development.
All credit to Mike Perham and contribsys, the same person who wrote Sidekiq — he's here as the maker, so questions about the roadmap or Enterprise are best asked of him. I'm not affiliated with Faktory or contribsys, just a fan of the design. Curious what people here use for crashed-worker semantics today.