Yes, Sidekiq is fast—blazingly so for trivial tasks like activating an empty job. But in real-world applications, the time it takes to process a job is almost entirely determined by your business logic, not the queueing system’s overhead. It might take seconds or even minutes to complete if your job involves sending emails, processing payments, or crunching data. In that context, the milliseconds Sidekiq saves on queue management are a drop in the bucket. The 15x speed advantage looks excellent on paper, but it’s practically negligible when your actual workload dominates execution time. Choosing Sidekiq for speed alone is like buying a sports car to drive through a traffic jam—it won’t get you there much faster.

Sidekiq leans on Redis, an in-memory database, for its speed—but that speed comes with a catch: stability. Redis is volatile by nature. Jobs can vanish if they crash, restart, or lose power unless you’ve jumped through hoops to configure persistence. Even then, there’s no guarantee—data can still slip away during a failure. Here’s where it gets messy: the free version of Sidekiq uses a basic fetch method (Redis’s RPOP) that’s prone to losing jobs if the process crashes or gets a KILL signal mid-execution. Imagine a job handling a customer payment disappearing because of a hiccup—good luck explaining that to your boss or users.

Sidekiq Pro, the paid version, sidesteps this with Redis’s RPOPLPUSH command, a “reliable fetch” trick that ensures jobs stay safe even if the process tanks (see Sidekiq Pro’s pitch). That’s great—if you’re willing to pay up. The free version? You’re stuck rolling the dice on job loss unless your app can shrug off missing work. As a friend of mine put it, it’s borderline extortion: risk your jobs with the free tier or fork over cash for basic reliability. That’s not a feature for mission-critical tasks—it’s a shakedown. Relying on an in-memory system already feels like a gamble; tying stability to a paywall makes it sting more.

Compare that to Solid Queue, which likely uses a durable database like PostgreSQL or MySQL. These systems are built to prioritize data integrity, ensuring jobs are safely stored on disk, not just in memory. If the server crashes or restarts, your jobs aren’t going anywhere—they’ll be right there waiting when things come back online. For most applications, that peace of mind outweighs Sidekiq’s speed flex. Stability isn’t sexy; it keeps your business running when things go wrong.

Sidekiq’s reliance on Redis also adds operational complexity. You’ll need to monitor Redis, configure it for persistence if you want durability, and ensure it’s backed up properly. That’s extra work—more moving parts to manage. That overhead might not be worth it for smaller teams or simpler apps. With a traditional database, Solid Queue might integrate more seamlessly with your existing setup, reducing the need to babysit yet another system. There is also Sqlite!

Sidekiq’s speed is a shiny distraction. The real question is what matters more: a benchmark win or a system you can trust? For most use cases, the negligible performance edge doesn’t justify the risks of job loss or the added complexity. Solid Queue offers reliable, durable job processing without forcing you to roll the dice on an in-memory database. Unless your app demands ultra-low latency and you’re ready to tame Redis, Sidekiq’s downsides make it a questionable choice. Go for stability over speed—you’ll sleep better at night.