> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://trigger.dev/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Wait: Overview

> During your run you can wait for a period of time or for something to happen.

Waiting allows you to write complex tasks as a set of async code, without having to schedule another task or poll for changes.

In the Trigger.dev Cloud we automatically pause execution of tasks when they are waiting for
longer than a few seconds.

When triggering and waiting for subtasks, the parent is checkpointed and while waiting does not count towards compute usage. When waiting for a time period (`wait.for` or `wait.until`), a wait longer than 5 seconds does not count towards compute usage.

Free compute isn't the same as freed concurrency: the concurrency slot is only released once we've snapshotted the machine and shut it down. For `wait.for` and `wait.until` that happens 60 seconds into the wait, so anything shorter stays `EXECUTING` and holds its slot for the whole wait.

| Function                                                              | What it does                                       |
| :-------------------------------------------------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------- |
| [wait.for()](/docs/wait-for)                                               | Waits for a specific period of time, e.g. 1 day.   |
| [wait.until()](/docs/wait-until)                                           | Waits until the provided `Date`.                   |
| [wait.forToken()](/docs/wait-for-token)                                    | Pauses runs until a token is completed.            |
| [inputStream.wait()](/docs/tasks/streams#wait--suspend-until-data-arrives) | Pauses runs until data arrives on an input stream. |