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Inngest

Durable workflow orchestration for serverless and edge

freemiumupdated Apr 21, 2026

Inngest is a workflow orchestration platform that replaces queues, state management, and scheduling with durable step functions. Write functions in TypeScript, Python, or Go that survive failures, sleep for days between steps, and retry only failed steps. SDKs integrate natively with Next.js, Vercel, and serverless platforms. Free tier includes 50,000 runs/month. Used by Resend, Mintlify, and Ocoya for background jobs, AI orchestration, and event-driven workflows.

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.

Pricing

Free 50K runs/mo; Pro $75/mo; Enterprise custom

Platforms

Cloud-managed; SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go

Categories

Tags

Use Cases

Trigger.dev logo

Trigger.dev

Open-source background jobs and AI workflows for TypeScript

Trigger.dev is an open-source platform for building and deploying background jobs, AI agents, and long-running workflows in TypeScript. It eliminates serverless timeouts with durable task execution, automatic retries, queue-based concurrency control, and elastic scaling. Used by 30,000+ developers at companies like MagicSchool and Icon.com, it processes hundreds of millions of agent runs monthly. Backed by a $16M Series A led by Dalton Caldwell's Standard Capital fund.

freemiumOpen Source
Temporal logo

Temporal

Durable execution for fault-tolerant workflows

Temporal is an open-source durable execution platform that ensures application code runs to completion regardless of failures or outages. It captures workflow state at every step, enabling seamless recovery without custom retry logic. With SDKs for Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, and .NET, Temporal powers mission-critical orchestration at Netflix, Nvidia, and other enterprises. Valued at $5B, it replaces fragile cron jobs, state machines, and saga patterns with resilient workflow-as-code.

freemiumOpen Source
Kestra logo

Kestra

Declarative orchestration for data, AI, and infra

Kestra is an open-source orchestration platform that uses declarative YAML to define event-driven and scheduled workflows for data pipelines, infrastructure automation, and AI workloads. With over 1,200 plugins, it connects to databases, cloud services, APIs, and SaaS tools without custom glue code. Kestra reached version 1.0 LTS with agentic AI capabilities, SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Java, and Go, and SOC 2 compliance. Clients include Leroy Merlin, Huawei, Tencent, and Decathlon.

freemiumOpen Source
Windmill logo

Windmill

Turn scripts into workflows, UIs, and APIs at scale

Windmill is an open-source workflow engine and developer platform built in Rust that turns scripts in Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL, and other languages into auto-generated UIs, API endpoints, workflows, data pipelines, AI agents, and scheduled jobs. The project publishes performance benchmarks against Airflow/Prefect/Temporal, supports Docker/Kubernetes self-hosting, and offers paid enterprise features.

freemiumOpen Source

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Comparisons

Inngest vs Temporal — Serverless Step Functions vs Self-Hosted Workflow Engine

Inngest and Temporal both provide durable workflow execution, but target different complexity levels. Inngest offers zero-infrastructure step functions via a managed cloud with TypeScript and Python SDKs. Temporal is a battle-tested distributed workflow engine at $1.72B valuation, used by Snapchat, Coinbase, and Netflix for mission-critical systems. This comparison helps teams choose between modern simplicity and enterprise-grade power.

InngestTemporal

Trigger.dev vs Inngest — Open-Source Background Jobs vs Managed Durable Workflows

Trigger.dev and Inngest are the two leading modern alternatives to traditional task queues for TypeScript applications. Trigger.dev is open-source (Apache 2.0) with full self-hosting support and $16M Series A backing. Inngest is a managed cloud platform with durable step functions and zero-infrastructure setup. Both eliminate serverless timeouts, but they differ in deployment model, pricing, and architectural philosophy.

FAQ

What is Inngest?

Inngest is a workflow orchestration platform that replaces queues, state management, and scheduling with durable step functions. Write functions in TypeScript, Python, or Go that survive failures, sleep for days between steps, and retry only failed steps. SDKs integrate natively with Next.js, Vercel, and serverless platforms. Free tier includes 50,000 runs/month. Used by Resend, Mintlify, and Ocoya for background jobs, AI orchestration, and event-driven workflows.

Is Inngest free?

Inngest offers a free tier alongside paid plans. Free 50K runs/mo; Pro $75/mo; Enterprise custom

What are the best Inngest alternatives?

The top editor-verified Inngest alternatives are Trigger.dev, Temporal, Kestra, and more.