Conductor OSS 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 | Conductor OSS | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 90 · Excellent |
| Category | Automation & Workflows | Automation & Workflows |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Java | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, bare-metal | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 32,225 | ★ 5,874 |
| First released | 2016 | 2021 |
| Replaces | AWS Step Functions, Camunda | Zapier, AWS Step Functions |
What are Conductor OSS and Inngest?
Conductor OSS
Conductor is a platform created to orchestrate microservices and business processes at scale. It lets teams define workflows as JSON and run them across distributed task workers.
- JSON-defined workflows
- Distributed task workers
- Visual workflow editor
- Built for microservice orchestration
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
Conductor OSS vs Inngest: key differences
Conductor OSS is written in Java, while Inngest is built with Go. Inngest is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Conductor OSS. Conductor OSS is the more established project (first released 2016), while Inngest arrived in 2021. Conductor OSS has the considerably larger community, at 32,225 GitHub stars versus 5,874.
Why pick each one
Choose Conductor OSS if…
- Battle-tested at scale
- Language-agnostic workers
Watch out for
- Java stack is resource heavy
Choose Inngest if…
- Good developer experience
- Reliable step execution
Watch out for
- Some features tied to Inngest Cloud
Frequently asked questions
Is Conductor OSS or Inngest better?
Neither is universally better. Conductor OSS has the larger community, while Inngest is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Conductor OSS and Inngest free and open-source?
Yes. Conductor OSS is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Inngest under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Conductor OSS and Inngest with Docker?
Conductor OSS: yes. Inngest: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Conductor OSS or Inngest?
Inngest has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Conductor OSS. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.