Inngest
github.com/inngest/inngest- Category
- Developer Tools
- Rank
- No. 385Tools index
- Pricing
- Freemium
- Type
- TOOL
- Builder
- inngest
- GitHub
- 5.7k stars
- Latest release
- v1.41.1
- Added
- Jul 4, 2026
About
Inngest is a durable workflow platform for running stateful step functions, background jobs, AI workflows, and scheduled (cron) tasks on serverless or servers without managing queues.
What it does
Applications publish structured events, which Inngest matches to application functions and invokes securely over HTTPS. Developers divide work into retriable steps, while the service records progress, schedules execution, and coordinates recovery. Triggers can come from events, webhooks, or cron schedules.
Why it's ranked here
A strong choice for event-driven application work that must survive failures or long pauses. Automatic step retries, persisted outputs, local production-parity tooling, broad flow controls, hosted operation, and self-hosting form a substantial package. The licensing and self-hosted maintenance obligations deserve close attention.
What's good
Steps can run for months and recover from failures without repeating completed work. Flow controls cover concurrency, throttling, debouncing, rate limiting, prioritization, and batching. The local dashboard exposes apps, functions, and run history. TypeScript, Python, Go, and Kotlin or Java SDKs broaden adoption.
Tradeoffs
The server and CLI use the Server Side Public License with delayed Apache publication, while SDKs use Apache 2.0. Self-hosted Postgres history grows without automatic truncation, requiring scheduled retention work. The documented SDK gap analysis also shows some behavior differs across languages.
How to use it well
Use it when product code already emits meaningful events and background work needs retries, pauses, coordination, or per-key flow control. Keep functions in your existing application infrastructure, test them with the local server, then sync them to hosted or self-hosted Inngest. It does not deploy or host your application code.
Technical notes+
README.md describes the Event API, event stream, runner, queue, executor, state store, GraphQL and REST APIs, and dashboard. go.mod defines the Go server module and includes PostgreSQL, SQLite, Redis, NATS, Kafka, OpenTelemetry, GraphQL, gRPC, and MCP dependencies. Makefile provides builds, race-tested tests, linting, end-to-end tests, protobuf generation, OpenAPI generation, GraphQL generation, cross-compilation, and UI builds. docs/SDK_SPEC.md specifies the HTTP and step protocol, while docs/SDK_SPEC_GAP_ANALYSIS.md records cross-SDK differences. docs/POSTGRES_RETENTION.md states that self-hosted Postgres has no automatic retention flag or background garbage collection.
Observed
- License
- Server and CLI use the Server Side Public License with delayed publication under Apache 2.0; SDKs use Apache 2.0.
- Primary language
- The server repository is a Go module, with Go-based build, test, generation, and release tasks.
- Install surface
- The development server is available through the npm-hosted CLI via npx; releases also publish binaries and Docker images.
- Interfaces
- Provides a CLI, language SDKs, HTTPS event and function communication, GraphQL API, REST API, and dashboard UI.
- SDK languages
- Official SDKs are listed for TypeScript or JavaScript, Python, Go, and Kotlin or Java.
- Deployment model
- Application functions run on user-managed infrastructure and sync with either the hosted platform or a self-hosted server.
Read from README.md, go.mod, Makefile, package.json, pkg/coreapi/graph/resolvers/app.go, docs/defer.md, docs/DEFERRED.md, docs/SDK_SPEC.md, docs/RELEASING.md, docs/CONTRIBUTING.md, docs/OPENAPI_WORKFLOW.md, docs/POSTGRES_RETENTION.md, docs/TYGO_TYPE_GENERATION.md, docs/SDK_SPEC_GAP_ANALYSIS.md, docs/DEVSERVER_ARCHITECTURE.md.
Tags
Tech Stack
Comments (0)
No comments yet
Indexed by a proprietary survey. Corrections welcome.