autobrr vs Inngest
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted automation & workflows options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | autobrr | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 87 · Excellent | 90 · Excellent |
| Category | Automation & Workflows | Automation & Workflows |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,077 | ★ 5,879 |
| First released | 2021 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Zapier | Zapier, AWS Step Functions |
What are autobrr and Inngest?
autobrr
autobrr is an open-source automation tool that monitors IRC and RSS release feeds, applies filters, and triggers actions such as sending releases to download clients. It is fully self-hosted.
- IRC and RSS monitoring
- Powerful filtering rules
- Download client actions
- Web interface
Inngest
Inngest is an open-source platform for building event-driven workflows and reliable background jobs. It provides durable step functions, automatic retries and a local development server, and the execution engine can be self-hosted.
- Event-driven background jobs
- Durable step functions
- Local development server
- Self-hostable execution engine
autobrr vs Inngest: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for autobrr versus Apache-2.0 for Inngest. Autobrr is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Inngest.
Why pick each one
Choose autobrr if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.1k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
Choose Inngest if…
- Good developer experience
- Reliable step execution
Watch out for
- Some features tied to Inngest Cloud
Frequently asked questions
Is autobrr or Inngest better?
Neither is universally better. Inngest has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are autobrr and Inngest free and open-source?
Yes. autobrr is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Inngest under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run autobrr and Inngest with Docker?
autobrr: yes. Inngest: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, autobrr or Inngest?
autobrr has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Inngest. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.