Inngest's core innovation is durable step functions — each step in a workflow runs independently, saves its result, and can be retried in isolation. If step 3 fails after steps 1 and 2 succeeded, only step 3 reruns. Steps can sleep for minutes, hours, or days between execution, enabling use cases like multi-day onboarding sequences, trial expiration reminders, and delayed follow-ups. Flow control features including concurrency limits, rate limiting, debouncing, priority queues, and batching let you manage resources without custom infrastructure.
The platform works by invoking your functions securely via HTTPS whenever triggering events are received — no queues or message brokers to configure. Functions run on any platform: serverless, dedicated servers, or edge. The local dev server provides production-parity testing with visual debugging. AgentKit, their multi-agent framework, enables building AI agent networks with deterministic routing and MCP tooling. The MCP dev server integration lets Claude Code and Cursor connect directly to local Inngest functions.
The free Hobby plan includes 50,000 runs per month with no credit card required. The Pro plan starts at $75/month with higher execution limits, granular metrics, and extended trace retention. Enterprise plans add SOC 2 compliance, HIPAA support, end-to-end encryption, SSO, and SAML. Note that Inngest is a managed cloud service — the TypeScript SDK is open-source but the orchestration engine cannot be self-hosted. For self-hosting needs, Trigger.dev or Temporal are alternatives.
