Inngest is a durable-execution platform that turns ordinary TypeScript, Python, or Go functions into retryable, stateful step workflows — no queues, no Redis, no separate worker pool required. We rate it 82/100 — for teams shipping background jobs, scheduled tasks, webhooks, and AI agent orchestration on serverless, it is the fastest path from idea to reliable production today. It is the wrong call for teams that require a fully self-hostable, Apache-2 licensed engine or prefer flat, predictable pricing tiers.

What is Inngest?

Inngest was founded in 2021 by Tony Holdstock-Brown (CEO) and Dan Farrelly (CTO), and has since raised a $6.1M seed round announced in January 2024 and a $20M Series A led by Notable Capital in October 2025. The open-source core at github.com/inngest/inngest sits at roughly 5.2k stars, written in Go (60%) and TypeScript (39%), with active releases through April 2026.

The specific problem Inngest solves is what developers on Hacker News call the queue tax: every production backend eventually needs background jobs, retries, scheduling, fan-out, and long-running workflows, which traditionally means running Redis plus a queue library plus a worker pool plus dead-letter-queue monitoring plus state tracking. Inngest collapses all of that into a single SDK call — you write a normal function with step.run() and step.sleep() blocks, and Inngest handles durability, retries, and state transparently, even across serverless timeouts. Unlike Trigger.dev, which is TypeScript-first and task-centric, Inngest is fully event-driven and multi-language (TS, Python, Go, Java).

Inngest dashboard showing durable function runs, steps, and trace visualisation — The Inngest dashboard visualises each step of a durable function — retries, sleeps, and waits are shown inline in the trace, which makes debugging long-running workflows substantially easier than tailing logs in a traditional queue system.

Key Features of Inngest

Durable step functions: Wrap any block of code in step.run() and Inngest persists its result so that retries resume from the last successful step. This eliminates the need to hand-roll idempotency keys for most workflows.
Event-driven orchestration: Functions are triggered by events or schedules, and can pause with step.waitForEvent() for days or weeks without consuming compute — you pay only for actual step executions.
AI agent primitives: The AgentKit SDK ships with routing, tool-use, and multi-agent patterns, and Inngest handles the durability and retries that LLM calls need (timeouts, rate limits, provider outages).
Flow control at scale: Native concurrency limits, throttling, rate-limiting, and prioritisation are declarative — no custom queue shaping required. Pro tier supports 100+ concurrent steps; Enterprise scales to 50,000.
Realtime observability: A built-in tracing UI shows every step, retry, event, and sleep for every run, with 7-day retention on Pro and 90-day on Enterprise.
Runs on anything: Deploy to Railway, Fly.io, Vercel, AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers, Google Cloud Run, or your own Kubernetes — the SDK is transport-agnostic.

Inngest local development environment with live trace view — The free Inngest Dev Server runs locally and gives you the exact same trace view you get in production — live reload, step-by-step replay, and event history all on your laptop.

What Users Say About Inngest

Sentiment on the Inngest 1.0 Show HN thread is broadly positive about developer experience but sharply critical about licensing. Multiple top commenters praised the dashboard, SDKs, and support as “top notch,” with one video-pipeline operator writing that they have used it for years and “it has always felt really polished.” A recurring pattern on r/webdev and r/typescript is the same story: teams replace a messy combination of BullMQ, Redis, cron jobs, and custom state tables with a single Inngest setup and cut both code and operational surface area.

Two complaints come up repeatedly. First, Inngest’s core server is licensed under the Server Side Public License (SSPL), not a true OSI-approved open-source license — several HN commenters accused the marketing of being misleading on this point. Second, full production self-hosting is not yet a shipped feature; the local dev server is open and free, but the production engine is Inngest Cloud only. Teams with hard on-prem or air-gapped requirements are better served by Temporal today.

Inngest Pricing

Inngest uses a usage-based model keyed on step executions, not seats. The free tier is meaningful: 50,000 monthly executions is enough for many small production workloads.

Plan	Price	Key Limits
Hobby	$0/mo	50,000 executions, 5 concurrent steps, 3 users, 50 realtime connections, unlimited branch environments, community support
Pro	From $75/mo	1M executions (up to 20M with add-ons), 100+ concurrent steps, 15+ users, 1,000+ realtime connections, 7-day trace retention, granular metrics
Enterprise	Custom	500–50,000 concurrent steps, SAML/RBAC/audit logs, 90-day trace retention, exportable observability, dedicated Slack support
Overage	$0.00005 per step	Tiered, drops to $0.000015/step above 50M/month — volume discounts automatic

Who Should Use Inngest?

Best for: startups and growth-stage engineering teams running backend workflows on serverless or hybrid infrastructure; TypeScript, Python, Go, and Java shops that want durable execution without running a dedicated cluster; teams building AI agents that need retries, tool-use, and human-in-the-loop pauses; anyone replacing a tangled BullMQ + Redis + cron setup.

Not ideal for: teams with strict on-prem, air-gapped, or SSPL-incompatible constraints today; organisations that require Apache-2 / MIT licensed dependencies; workloads that need millisecond-scale event processing (this is orchestration, not streaming — use Kafka).

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Genuine developer experience — the dev server and trace UI are consistently called out on HN and Reddit as the best in the category
Event-driven model with waitForEvent is more expressive than task-centric alternatives for long-running business workflows
50,000-execution free tier is actually useful in production, not just a demo
Multi-language SDKs (TS, Python, Go, Java) — rare among durable workflow engines
AgentKit gives AI workflows durability without writing a custom retry layer

Cons:

SSPL license on the core engine — source-available, not true open source
Full production self-hosting still not GA (dev server is; production engine is Cloud-only)
Usage-based pricing can be hard to predict for spiky workloads
Step-granular billing means function design affects cost — teams occasionally report surprise bills after a refactor

Alternatives to Inngest

Trigger.dev — TypeScript-first, task-centric, Apache-2 licensed and fully self-hostable today; the natural pick if TypeScript is your only language and licensing matters. Temporal — the battle-tested enterprise standard with the deepest self-hosting story and the steepest learning curve; better for on-prem and mission-critical workloads at giant scale. n8n — visual, no-code workflow builder rather than code-first; better for non-engineering teams, weaker for engineers who want to keep logic in their repo.

Verdict: Is Inngest Worth It?

Yes, for most TypeScript, Python, or Go teams building durable workflows, background jobs, scheduled tasks, or AI agents in 2026 — Inngest is the fastest on-ramp to reliable execution in the category, and the Hobby tier is enough to run real production traffic. The 82/100 rating reflects a category-leading developer experience offset by two honest caveats: the SSPL licensing and the lack of production self-hosting. If neither blocks you, you will be shipping durable workflows by lunchtime. If either does, ship on Trigger.dev or Temporal instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Inngest free?: Yes. The Hobby plan is $0/month and includes 50,000 step executions, 3 users, 5 concurrent steps, unlimited branch environments, and community support. Paid plans start at $75/month (Pro).
Is Inngest open source?: Partially. The SDKs are Apache 2.0 licensed, but the core server is licensed under the Server Side Public License (SSPL), which is source-available but not OSI-approved open source. The GitHub repository is inngest/inngest.
Can I self-host Inngest in production?: Not yet as a supported configuration — the free dev server runs locally, but production deployments currently require Inngest Cloud. Full self-hosting is on the roadmap per the founders.
What languages does Inngest support?: Official SDKs exist for TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, Go, and Java. The HTTP protocol is open, so community SDKs in other languages are possible.
How does Inngest compare to Trigger.dev?: Inngest is event-driven and multi-language (TS, Python, Go, Java) with an SSPL core. Trigger.dev is TypeScript-only, task-centric, Apache-2 licensed, and fully self-hostable. Pick Inngest for multi-language stacks and event-driven workflows; pick Trigger.dev if TypeScript-only, open licensing, or self-hosting matters most.
How does Inngest compare to Temporal?: Temporal is the enterprise-grade, fully open-source, self-hostable workflow engine with a steeper learning curve. Inngest trades some of Temporal’s flexibility for a dramatically simpler SDK, native serverless support, and a managed cloud. For small and mid-sized teams, Inngest is usually faster to ship; for large-scale on-prem workloads, Temporal remains the safer pick.

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