What is Inngest used for?

Inngest is a workflow orchestration platform for durable step functions and AI workflows, runnable on its cloud platform or a self-hosted server. It is a good fit for running reliable background jobs and orchestrating long-running AI workflows.

Is Inngest open source?

Yes. Inngest is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at inngest/inngest and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Inngest is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Inngest?

Yes. Inngest can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Inngest an alternative to?

Inngest is an open-source alternative to AWS Step Functions, Azure Functions, Amazon EventBridge and Google Cloud Workflows. Other open-source alternatives to AWS Step Functions include Kestra, Conductor OSS and Temporal.

Is Inngest actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Inngest was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.45.1, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 5.9k stars on GitHub.

Inngest: open-source alternative to AWS Step Functions

About Inngest

Inngest is a workflow orchestration platform built around durable functions. These functions replace separate queues, state management and scheduling so developers can write reliable step functions and background jobs without managing the underlying infrastructure.

An Inngest function has three parts. Triggers are events, cron schedules or webhook events, flow control configures how runs are queued and executed through concurrency, throttling, debouncing, rate limiting and prioritization, and steps are the building blocks that can retry on error and run for months. You write functions with a language SDK, test them with the Inngest Dev Server, deploy them to your own infrastructure and sync them with the Inngest Platform or a self-hosted server, which then calls them securely over HTTPS when events arrive.

Inngest is written in Go. Its quick starts cover Next.js, Node.js and Python, and the documentation includes project architecture and self-hosting guides. The repository lists its licence as other, so check the terms before running it yourself.

Key features

Durable step functions with automatic retries
Event, cron and webhook triggers
Concurrency, throttling and rate limiting controls
Local Dev Server with dashboard
SDKs for several languages
Cloud platform or self-hosted server

Good fit for

→Running reliable background jobs
→Orchestrating long-running AI workflows

Built with: Go
Tags: workflow-engine; durable-functions; event-driven; serverless; background-jobs; orchestration; go; ai-workflows

Inngest: questions and answers

What is Inngest used for?: Inngest is a workflow orchestration platform for durable step functions and AI workflows, runnable on its cloud platform or a self-hosted server. It is a good fit for running reliable background jobs and orchestrating long-running AI workflows.
Is Inngest open source?: Yes. Inngest is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at inngest/inngest and is written mainly in Go.
Is Inngest free?: Yes. Inngest is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Inngest?: Yes. Inngest can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Inngest an alternative to?: Inngest is an open-source alternative to AWS Step Functions, Azure Functions, Amazon EventBridge and Google Cloud Workflows. Other open-source alternatives to AWS Step Functions include Kestra, Conductor OSS and Temporal.
Is Inngest actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Inngest was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.45.1, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 5.9k stars on GitHub.