Node.js Creator Launches Open-Source Alternative to Cloudflare Durable Objects

Ryan Dahl, the creator of Node.js, has unveiled celld, a self-hosted and distributed implementation of Workers and Durable Objects. According to reporting from The Register, celld is designed to be compatible with the JavaScript APIs used by Cloudflare, allowing developers to utilize the stateful serverless model without being tied to Cloudflare's infrastructure.

Cloudflare's Durable Objects, developed with Kenton Varda, co-locate data with compute using single-threaded execution and SQLite to eliminate concurrency issues. This architecture is frequently used for AI agents, multiplayer games, and collaborative apps. While Cloudflare's version runs on its own serverless runtime, celld replaces that backend with the Tokio Rust asynchronous runtime and uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or equivalent storage engines.

Dahl claims celld is "orders of magnitude cheaper at scale." As reported by The Register, Dahl estimated that 100 resident Durable Object cells cost $415 per month on Cloudflare, while a celld implementation on a DigitalOcean 8 GB droplet with an S3-compatible bucket would cost approximately $49. A Cloudflare spokesperson disputed these figures, telling The Register that the $415 cost assumes all objects are continuously active; if left to slumber, the cost would drop to $20.65.

Available under an Apache 2 license, celld supports JavaScript and TypeScript, with potential for Rust, C/C++, Go, or Zig via WebAssembly. Notably, the project's GitHub page explicitly prohibits AI contributions, citing the burden low-context changes place on maintainers.