Inngest
Event-driven workflow engine: durable step functions and AI workflows on serverless, servers, or the edge
About
Inngest lets you run background jobs and durable workflows as plain functions in your own app: wrap work in steps with step.run(...), trigger functions with events or cron, and Inngest retries each step independently, survives deploys and serverless timeouts, and shows every run's full history.
Your functions live in your codebase (Next.js, Node, Python, Go, Elixir) behind a serve endpoint — no separate worker fleet to manage — with a local Dev Server for development and Inngest Cloud or a self-hosted server (SSPL-licensed) for production.
What it can do
- • Durable step functions: per-step retries, automatic state persistence across failures and deploys
- • Event-driven triggers, cron schedules, and `step.waitForSignal()` for human-in-the-loop pauses
- • Durable sleeps and delays (workflows can run for months)
- • Concurrency controls, throttling, and debouncing per function
- • AI orchestration: `step.ai.wrap()` makes LLM calls durable and retryable
- • Serverless-friendly: v4 checkpointing packs multiple steps into a single request; configurable maxDuration
- • Local Dev Server with run inspection, event replay, and function invocation
Setup
- Start the local Dev Server (no account needed):
npx inngest-cli@latest dev— dashboard at http://localhost:8288. - Install the SDK in your app, e.g.
npm install inngest(Python:pip install inngest, plus Go/Elixir SDKs). - Create an Inngest client, define a function with
step.run(...)steps, and expose the serve handler (e.g./api/inngestroute in Next.js). - Point your app at the local Dev Server: set
INNGEST_DEV=1(v4 SDK) in.env.localand run your app's dev server. - Trigger the function from the Dev Server UI (Invoke tab) or by sending an event with
inngest.send(...); inspect steps, retries, and timelines in the Runs tab. - For production: create an Inngest Cloud account, add event + signing keys, and sync your app — or self-host the OSS server (SSPL license).
Prerequisites
Node.js 18+ (or Python/Go/Elixir) and an existing app to host the serve endpoint (e.g. a Next.js project). No database or queue to run locally — the Dev Server is a single process.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 7/10
Scored 7/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: 5,937 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers); last push 0d ago; 83 releases/12mo; 255 open issues. Manual review: SSPL is not open source; CLI telemetry history with no documented current opt-out. License: SSPL v1.0 (source-available, NOT OSI).
★ 5,937 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 7.2/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.3/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 5.8/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 7.0/10
- · 5,937 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers)
- · last push 0d ago; 83 releases/12mo; 255 open issues
- · manual review: SSPL is not open source; CLI telemetry history with no documented current opt-out
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.