Inngest alternatives in 2026: compare by job and floor price

We think most people searching for Inngest alternatives are fine with Inngest itself. They hit one of two walls. Either the free tier ran out (5 concurrent steps, 50,000 executions a month, and execution pauses when the quota is gone), or they saw the $99/month Pro floor and realised they'd pay it for one scheduled job.

Those are two different jobs: durable multi-step execution, and "run this HTTP call later".

We checked every price below on 5 October 2026, on each vendor's pricing page.

Inngest alternatives: what you are actually replacing

Inngest bundles three things that most alternatives sell separately:

1. Durable steps, checkpointed so a crash resumes from the last good one.
2. Events, with fan-out, batching and flow control.
3. A scheduler: cron functions and step.sleep.

If you use all three, you want another durable platform. If you only use the third (very common), most of Pro is stuff you don't use.

Inngest meters per run and per step (5 step.run() calls count as 6 executions), so the free quota is fewer runs than it sounds. Pro includes 1M executions, and there's nothing between $0 and $99. The step math is in our full Inngest pricing breakdown.

Comparison table: price model and floor

If you need real durable execution

Temporal is the serious answer. It handles workflows that run for months, and its recovery guarantees are the strictest on this list. Pay-as-you-go has no base fee, so the real cost is the learning curve and the workers you host.

Restate adds durable state and reliable calls to code that looks like a normal service. You can self-host it; for Cloud, check restate.dev/pricing (it showed no figures when we checked).

Hatchet is an open source, Postgres-backed task queue. It moved to pay-as-you-go with no monthly floor, and retries aren't billed.

DBOS puts durability in your own database, so you don't run a separate orchestrator. The library is free, and Pro is for tooling and support.

If you want the same shape, cheaper

Trigger.dev is the closest like-for-like swap: TypeScript tasks on managed compute, with retries and long waits. The floor is $10/month on Hobby, compared to $99 on Inngest Pro.

Waits longer than 5 seconds are checkpointed and don't count toward compute. More in Omniyond vs Trigger.dev.

Cloudflare Workflows makes sense if your app already runs on Workers. Workers Free gives 3,000 Workflow steps a day, and a sleeping workflow uses no CPU time. The tradeoff is that you commit to Cloudflare's runtime.

If you only needed the scheduler

This is where we think most people leaving Inngest actually belong.

Upstash QStash is an HTTP message queue with cron built in. The free tier gives you 1,000 messages a day and 10 active schedules, and pay-as-you-go has no monthly fee.

QStash is cheaper than Omniyond per message. If all you need is cheap HTTP delivery at volume, pick QStash.

Omniyond is the one we build, so read this part with that in mind. Omniyond is a pay-per-use API toolbox for AI builders: hosted HTTP scheduling and utilities on one key and one balance, from $0.01 a call.

You point it at a URL, pick once or a recurrence (5m, 1h, 1d), and it makes the call. It retries 3 times, then the job goes to a dead-letter queue. The result is stored or POSTed to your callback.

There's no SDK or subscription. Packs are $9, $29 or $99 one-time and never expire, and the same balance pays for extraction, PDFs, QR codes and short links. An MCP server lets an agent in Claude Desktop or Cursor create jobs by itself.

It has two limits we should be upfront about. Recurrence is interval-only, so you can't express "every weekday at 9am". And for branching multi-step workflows it's the wrong tool.

If you want an agent to act later, see cron for AI agents.

Break-even math: monthly floor divided by runs

These are floors only; Trigger.dev's usage charges come on top of the $10.

Inngest Pro breaks even with a cent per run at roughly 9,900 runs a month. Below that, you pay for capacity you don't use. Above it, Pro is cheaper, so if you're past that volume and happy, stay on Inngest (same if you fit in the free tier).

On the floor alone, before compute, Trigger.dev Hobby gets to $0.01 a run at 1,000 runs, and above that the floor is cheaper than our price.

There's a longer breakdown in pay-per-use API pricing for AI agents.

How to choose in one pass

• Multi-step workflows with real recovery requirements: Temporal, or Restate if you want normal service code.
• Already on Cloudflare Workers: Cloudflare Workflows.
• Inngest's shape at a tenth of the floor: Trigger.dev.
• High-volume simple HTTP delivery: QStash, because it's cheaper.
• One scheduled feature, or an agent that schedules its own work: Omniyond. Start from $9, or add it to your MCP client with npx omniyond-mcp.
• Happy on Inngest and past roughly 9,900 runs a month: stay. If you're leaving anyway, how to migrate off Inngest is the runbook.

FAQ

What are the best Inngest alternatives if I only need cron or scheduled HTTP?

QStash if price per message matters most. Omniyond if you want no SDK, an MCP server and one balance across tools.

Why do people leave Inngest's free tier?

Usually because of the 5 concurrent steps, or the execution quota, which counts every step. When it runs out, execution pauses until you upgrade, and the next plan is $99/month.

Is Trigger.dev a drop-in Inngest alternative?

It's the closest one, but the SDKs differ, so you still rewrite each function.

When should I pick Temporal instead of Inngest?

When workflows run for weeks or months, or correctness after a crash is the main requirement.

Is Upstash QStash cheaper than Omniyond for simple HTTP delivery?

Yes. $1 per 100,000 messages is far below $0.01 a run.

Does Omniyond replace Inngest's durable step functions?

It only schedules single HTTP calls with retries, so for checkpointed steps or branching, stay on Inngest or pick Temporal, Trigger.dev or Hatchet. The head-to-head is in Omniyond vs Inngest.

How do I estimate real cost: monthly floor vs pay-per-run?

Divide the monthly floor by your run count, add the usage charges, then compare that to the per-run price.

The short version

For durable steps, pick Temporal for rigor or Trigger.dev for Inngest's shape at a lower floor. If you only needed the scheduler, a cent a run beats the $99 floor until roughly 9,900 runs a month. Past that, or inside the free tier, stay on Inngest.

Prices here move often, so check the vendor's page before you commit.