workers

SQS is cheap until retry storms: short polling × uncapped workers. July 2026 — long poll 20s, visibility math, DLQ alarms, concurrency caps.

SQS, MSK Kafka, and Redis queues are not interchangeable. Each has different cost models, ordering guarantees, and failure modes. This guide covers when to use each, how to autoscale workers on queue depth, and how to build idempotent consumers.