Celery vs. IronWorker — Which One Should You Choose?

Table of Contents

1. Celery vs. IronWorker: Features and Benefits 
2. Celery vs. IronWorker: Pricing
3. Celery vs. IronWorker: Reviews
4. Conclusion

Celery vs. IronWorker: Features and Benefits

Celery vs. IronWorker: Technical Details

Let's start by emphasizing the main differences between Celery and IronWorker:

• Celery is a task queue based on distributed message passing. It's used in production systems to process millions of tasks every single day, primarily in real-time. (Celery also supports scheduling.) Written in Python, Celery executes tasks concurrently on worker nodes using eventlet, gevent, or multiprocessing. It typically processes tasks asynchronously. (This means tasks run in the background).

• IronWorker is a hosted background solution that, among other things, powers tasks. It isolates the dependencies and code of various tasks and lets you run containers at scale. IronWorker is serverless and runs in a multi-language environment, so it comes with lots of flexibility.

While, at first glance, Celery and IronWorker seem similar, they perform different functions. At its core, Celery is a message queue, while IronWorker is an all-encompassing serverless solution for task processing and management. (You could call IronWorker a "job queue as a service" platform.) Like Celery, IronWorker runs in the background but it does so much more than just queue jobs.

IronWorker, established in 2014, has six years on Celery, which launched in 2020. As a new platform, fewer businesses have used Celery compared to IronWorker, which sometimes makes it difficult to compare these two technologies.

Celery vs. IronWorker: Programming

As we mentioned above, Celery runs in Python (and only in Python), which excludes some businesses immediately. IronWorker, on the other hand, runs in a multi-language environment {containerized, we should add) — something called "language agnosticism."

Celery certainly implements tasks in Python apps quickly and successfully, which is a major plus. But if you want the freedom to optimize tasks for apps in different languages, IronWorker ticks all the boxes. Use it for any language you can think of (except binary files).

Celery vs. IronWorker: Deployment

Another significant difference between Celery and IronWorker is deployment. IronWorker is fully on-premise deployable and cloud and hybrid cloud deployable, which is mighty impressive. Iron.io's enterprise-level shared cloud infrastructure is seamless and stress-free, providing users with much-needed peace of mind.

Unfortunately Celery doesn't have any of these features.

Celery vs. IronWorker: Performance

IronWorker has the better UI of the two, and it's just a lot easier to get things done. While Celery is more than stable, IronWorker takes the wheel when it comes to logging and monitoring so you can spend time doing far more interesting things. Everything runs in the background so smoothly, you almost forget about the tasks lined up.

With IronWorker, you can "containerize" background tasks with more flexibility with push notifications, ETL processing, image/video processing, email delivery, and cron replacement. Plus, the platform complements the modern cloud, and you can interact via a RESTful HTTP-based API.

We'd say Celery and IronWorker tie for ease-of-use, though IronWorker is much easier to scale. (It allocates resources on a granular level.) Celery, however, wins points for integrations, with capabilities for Sentry, HexoPress, and more.

Celery vs. IronWorker: Popularity

As mentioned earlier, Celery only established itself in 2020, so it has a lot to prove. IronWorker, however, has been around since 2014 and developed a loyal community of users. It's no wonder, then, that big names like Shrinkray and Bandai Namco Entertainment America use the platform. Despite its "newness," brands such as Udemy. Robinhood, Accenture, and Trivago use Celery.