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Ballast vs Temporal
Temporal is the most battle-tested durable-execution engine there is — and it's deliberately general-purpose and code-first. Ballast takes the same durability guarantees and shapes them for AI agents, with the product layer built in.
At a glance
The three biggest differences
Agent-shaped, not general-purpose
Temporal is a low-level durability engine for any workload. Ballast applies the same guarantees specifically to AI agents.
The product layer is built in
Visual builder, approval UI, per-step cost, and evaluations ship as features — not something you assemble on top of primitives.
Productive in minutes
Start with a keyless mock model and a template — no SDK, workers, or cluster to stand up first.
Feature by feature
Ballast vs Temporal, in detail
Temporal gives you world-class primitives; you build the agent product on top — the visual builder, the human-approval UI, per-step cost accounting, evaluations, and governance. Ballast ships those as first-class features so an AI team is productive in minutes instead of assembling them.
| Capability | Ballast | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Agent-native | ||
| Purpose-built for AI agents | General-purpose | |
| Visual workflow builderA graph non-engineers can read | ||
| LLM / agent nodes | DIY | |
| Reliability | ||
| Durable, checkpointed execution | ||
| Resume from last checkpoint | ||
| Time to first run | Minutes, keyless | SDK + worker setup |
| Human & cost | ||
| Human-in-the-loop approvalBuilt-in queue vs hand-rolled signals | Built-in UI | DIY (signals) |
| Per-step cost in USD | ||
| Built-in evaluations | ||
| Governance & platform | ||
| Audit log + RBAC | Built-in | Enterprise |
| Self-host | ||
| Languages | Python, TypeScript | Go, Java, TS, Python, .NET |
Fair play
When Temporal is the better choice
Choose Temporalwhen you need extreme scale and polyglot backends (Go/Java/.NET), you're orchestrating mission-critical non-AIworkflows, or you want the lowest-level durable-execution primitive with an engineering team ready to build the product layer yourself. It's the category's proven foundation — Ballast is the opinionated, agent-shaped layer above that idea.
Try the agent-native path.
Run a checkpointed, governed workflow in minutes — no API keys to start.