Comparison
ShellOrbit vs Hookdeck
Hookdeck is the product we would name if someone asked what the grown up version of this category looks like. It is broader, older, audited, and materially cheaper than ShellOrbit once you get past roughly 150,000 events a month. Below that line, and on how long your payloads stick around, ShellOrbit is the better deal.
Choose Hookdeck when
You are past about 150,000 events a month, you need to deliver into queues or object storage rather than only HTTPS, you want setup guides for named providers, or your buyer asks for a SOC 2 report.
Choose ShellOrbit when
You are a small production app under about 150,000 events a month, you want 14 to 90 days of replayable history rather than 3 to 7, and you would rather pay $15 than $39 to get off the free tier.
| What is being compared | ShellOrbit | Hookdeck |
|---|---|---|
| What the product is for | Receiving inbound webhooks, and only that. | Advantage Hookdeck. Receiving and sending, plus delivering events into queues and object storage. Outpost adds SQS, Pub/Sub, Kafka and similar destinations. |
| Free tier | Advantage ShellOrbit. 15,000 events a month, 3 day retention, no card. | 10,000 events a month, 3 day retention. |
| First paid plan | Advantage ShellOrbit. $15 a month. 75,000 events, 14 day retention. | From $39 a month. 10,000 events included, 7 day retention. |
| Longest retention without calling sales | Advantage ShellOrbit. 90 days, on the $99 plan. | 30 days, on the $499 plan. |
| Price of extra events | $0.50 down to $0.30 per 1,000. That is $50 to $30 per 100,000. | Advantage Hookdeck. $3.00 per 100,000, falling to about $0.35 per 100,000 at very high volume. Roughly ten times cheaper per event than us. This is the single biggest gap on this page. |
| Bill at 150,000 events a month | Advantage ShellOrbit. $40 flat. Close enough to be a coin toss. Retention is the real difference here: 30 days against 7. | About $43. |
| Bill at 750,000 events a month | $99 flat. | Advantage Hookdeck. About $61. |
| Bill at 5 million events a month | About $1,374. | Advantage Hookdeck. About $189. If this is your volume, do not buy ShellOrbit. |
| Where events can be delivered | HTTPS endpoints. Up to 3 per source on Pro and above. | Advantage Hookdeck. HTTPS, plus queues, streams and object storage. |
| Setup guides for named providers | None. Anything that can POST works, but you wire it up yourself. | Advantage Hookdeck. Documented guides for a long list of named providers. |
| Forwarding to localhost while developing | No first party tunnel. Point an endpoint at any URL you can already reach. | Advantage Hookdeck. A CLI that forwards events to a local port. |
| Uptime commitment | 99.9 percent monthly on the $99 plan, written into the terms. | Service level agreements on the higher plans. |
| Compliance reports | None. No SOC 2, no HIPAA. | Advantage Hookdeck. SOC 2. |
| Who is behind it | One developer. Launched in 2026. | Advantage Hookdeck. A funded company that has been at this for years. |
Where Hookdeck is genuinely better
Per event pricing at volume. Hookdeck charges about $3.00 per 100,000 events over your allowance and less than that at scale. ShellOrbit charges $30 to $50 for the same 100,000. That is not a rounding difference, it is an order of magnitude, and it is why the bills above diverge so hard past a million events.
Scope. Hookdeck handles both directions and can put an event into a queue, a stream or a bucket rather than only calling an HTTPS endpoint. ShellOrbit calls HTTPS endpoints. If your architecture wants events in SQS, we are the wrong tool and there is no configuration that fixes it.
Maturity. They have a SOC 2 report, a provider catalogue, a local development CLI, and years of production behind them. ShellOrbit launched this year and is maintained by one person. If your procurement process has a security questionnaire in it, that difference will decide this for you before any feature does.
Where ShellOrbit is genuinely better
Retention per pound. Hookdeck’s $39 plan keeps events for 7 days. Getting to 30 days means the $499 plan. ShellOrbit keeps 14 days at $15, 30 days at $40, and 90 days at $99. If your reason for buying this is “a delivery failed last Tuesday and I need to see it”, that gap matters more than most feature rows.
The shape of the price ladder. Hookdeck steps $0, $39, $499. ShellOrbit steps $0, $15, $40, $99. There is nothing wrong with a $499 plan except that a side project cannot reach for it, and the jump means the middle of the market either overpays or stays on the tier below and hits its limits.
The free tier. 15,000 events against 10,000, at the same 3 day retention. Small margin, but it is the plan most people start on.
The crossover, stated plainly
ShellOrbit is cheaper up to roughly 150,000 events a month. Between 150,000 and 750,000 the two are close and retention is the tiebreaker. Above roughly a million events a month, Hookdeck is cheaper and the gap widens quickly.
We would rather write that sentence here than have you find it on your third invoice.
Try it on your own webhooks
Free for 15,000 events a month, no card. Paid plans start at $15.