Inngest vs Temporal
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted automation & workflows options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Inngest | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 97 · Excellent |
| Category | Automation & Workflows | Automation & Workflows |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,879 | ★ 23,263 |
| First released | 2021 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Zapier, AWS Step Functions | AWS Step Functions, Azure Logic Apps |
What are Inngest and Temporal?
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
Temporal
Temporal is an open-source platform for building durable, reliable workflows in code. It guarantees that long-running business processes survive failures, restarts and infrastructure changes.
- Durable execution guarantees
- Workflows written in general-purpose code
- Automatic retries and state persistence
- SDKs for many languages
Inngest vs Temporal: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Inngest versus MIT for Temporal. Inngest is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Temporal. Temporal is the more established project (first released 2019), while Inngest arrived in 2021. Temporal has the considerably larger community, at 23,263 GitHub stars versus 5,879.
Why pick each one
Choose Inngest if…
- Good developer experience
- Reliable step execution
Watch out for
- Some features tied to Inngest Cloud
Choose Temporal if…
- Extremely reliable for long workflows
- Strong multi-language support
Watch out for
- Operationally complex to self-host
Frequently asked questions
Is Inngest or Temporal better?
Neither is universally better. Temporal 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 Inngest and Temporal free and open-source?
Yes. Inngest is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Temporal under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Inngest and Temporal with Docker?
Inngest: yes. Temporal: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Inngest or Temporal?
Inngest has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Temporal. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.