Inngest Review: Event-Driven Workflows for Serverless | hokai.io
Inngest runs event-driven background jobs and workflows with zero infrastructure. 100,000 free executions/month on Vercel, Cloudflare, or Next.js. Pro from $75/month.
Inngest is an event-driven workflow platform for serverless background jobs, founded in 2021 and backed by $34M from Andreessen Horowitz and GGV Capital. Runs on Vercel, Cloudflare, or Next.js with zero infrastructure setup. Free tier includes 100,000 executions per month, then $50 per million. Pro plan is $75/month with higher limits and advanced observability features.
Pricing
Hobby (Free): 100,000 executions/month, then $50 per million additional executions. Pro: $75/month includes higher limits and advanced features. Enterprise: custom pricing with SAML, RBAC, audit trails, dedicated support. All plans include unlimited dev and staging environments.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Inngest and what does it do?
Inngest is an event-driven workflow orchestration platform for building reliable background jobs and scheduled tasks on serverless platforms. Founded in 2021 by Tony Holdstock-Brown and Dan Farrelly, Inngest has raised $34M including a $6.1M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. The platform eliminates the need to manage traditional queues, worker processes, or infrastructure: you deploy Inngest functions alongside your Next.js app on Vercel or any Node.js environment.
How much does Inngest cost?
Inngest offers a free Hobby tier with 100,000 executions per month, then charges $50 per million additional executions. The Pro plan costs $75/month and includes higher execution limits and advanced features like granular metrics and extended trace retention. Enterprise plans are custom-priced and include SAML authentication, role-based access control, audit trails, 90-day trace retention, and dedicated Slack support. All tiers include unlimited development and staging environments.
What are the main features of Inngest?
The core features are event-driven triggers (respond to webhooks, events, or cron schedules), step-level durability (each step retries automatically on failure), multi-tenant flow control (concurrency, throttling, rate limiting, prioritization), and native Vercel integration (automatic code sync and environment variable management). Inngest also stores full event history for observability, testing, and replay, plus MCP support lets you debug functions from Claude Code or Cursor.
Is Inngest free to use?
Yes, the Hobby tier is completely free and includes 100,000 executions per month, which is enough to run moderate-scale background jobs and scheduled tasks without paying. After 100,000 executions, you pay $50 per million additional executions. Switching to the Pro plan at $75/month gives you higher execution allowances and advanced observability features. The free tier includes unlimited dev and staging environments.
What are the best alternatives to Inngest?
The main alternatives are Trigger.dev (open-source, runs compute, can self-host), Temporal (enterprise-grade, requires infrastructure management, deterministic workflows), and traditional queue systems like BullMQ (Redis-based, MIT licensed). Choose Trigger.dev if you want a simpler plain-async-function approach or need to self-host. Choose Temporal if you need battle-tested at-scale reliability and deep customization. Choose Inngest if you want zero infrastructure and the best free tier.
Who is Inngest best for?
Inngest is best for startups and indie developers building on Vercel who want background jobs without managing infrastructure, teams building AI agent workflows with long-running tasks, and full-stack Next.js teams replacing cron jobs and webhooks with a unified platform. It is not a good fit for enterprise teams with strict data residency requirements who cannot use cloud-hosted services, or teams already invested in Temporal or Kubernetes who need low-level control.
Does Inngest support Python and other languages?
Inngest's primary SDK is for TypeScript and JavaScript, with first-class support for Next.js, Hono, and H3 frameworks. The platform also supports Python and Go. Inngest functions run on your existing serverless platform (Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, etc.), so language support depends on what your platform of choice supports. The TypeScript SDK is open-source on GitHub at github.com/inngest/inngest.