Temporal vs Inngest
A comparison of Temporal and Inngest built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- Pick Temporal if
- Long-running, stateful workflows where losing execution history is the failure that matters — Temporal keeps event history as first-class storage rather than logs that expire.
- Pick Inngest if
- Multi-step workflows that need durable execution and retries between steps, rather than a bare queue you write a consumer for.
4 sourced criteria separate them:
- Entry paid plan
- Temporal: $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions.
- Inngest: $99/month for Pro, described as a starting price with usage above the included allowance billed on top.
- Pricing model
- Temporal: Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure.
- Inngest: Per execution, where a step counts the same as a run, plus separate meters for events ingested, span data, scores and realtime connections. The pricing page ships a calculator because the execution count is not the run count.
- Included per month
- Temporal: 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category.
- Inngest: 50,000 executions a month on the free Hobby plan and 1,000,000 on Pro, pay-as-you-go to 20M. An execution is one function run or one step, so a run with two steps counts as three.
- Message retention
- Temporal: Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks.
- Inngest: Queue depth rather than a time window: 100,000 queued items on the free plan and 1,000,000 or more on Pro. Trace retention is 7 days on Pro and 90 on Enterprise.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Temporal 0
Inngest 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Temporal | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions. | $99/month for Pro, described as a starting price with usage above the included allowance billed on top. |
| Pricing model | Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure. | Per execution, where a step counts the same as a run, plus separate meters for events ingested, span data, scores and realtime connections. The pricing page ships a calculator because the execution count is not the run count. |
| Queues | ||
| Included per month | 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category. | 50,000 executions a month on the free Hobby plan and 1,000,000 on Pro, pay-as-you-go to 20M. An execution is one function run or one step, so a run with two steps counts as three. |
| Message retention | Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks. | Queue depth rather than a time window: 100,000 queued items on the free plan and 1,000,000 or more on Pro. Trace retention is 7 days on Pro and 90 on Enterprise. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Temporal
- $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions.
- Inngest
- $99/month for Pro, described as a starting price with usage above the included allowance billed on top.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“Essentials Starting at $100/mo. [...] 1 M Actions 1 GB Active Storage 40 GB Retained Storage [...] Business Starting at $500/mo. [...] 2.5 M Actions 2.5 GB Act”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“Pro [...] Starting at $99/mo [...] 1M executions included Pay as you go up to 20M”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Temporal
- Per Action, with storage billed separately and split between open and closed workflows. Plans buy SLA tier and support response rather than volume — Essentials is 99.9% with one business day P0 response, Business adds scale. An open-source self-hosted edition runs the same service on your own infrastructure.
- Inngest
- Per execution, where a step counts the same as a run, plus separate meters for events ingested, span data, scores and realtime connections. The pricing page ships a calculator because the execution count is not the run count.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“Cloud platform 99.9% SLA, 99.99% HA options [...] Essentials support with 1 business day P0 response time [...] Host It Yourself Open Source Temporal Self-Hosted [...] Temporal Service Temporal SDKs Temporal CLI Temporal UI Community Support”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“TOTAL EXECUTIONS PER MONTH (30,000 runs × 2 steps per run) + 30,000 runs = 90,000 executions [...] 500 MB span data ingested [...] 10K scores [...] 500k events ingested [...] 50 realtime connections”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Included per month
- Temporal
- 1,000,000 Actions a month on Essentials and 2.5 million on Business. An Action is Temporal's own unit — a workflow operation — and is not comparable to a message, an operation or an execution elsewhere in this category.
- Inngest
- 50,000 executions a month on the free Hobby plan and 1,000,000 on Pro, pay-as-you-go to 20M. An execution is one function run or one step, so a run with two steps counts as three.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“Essentials Starting at $100/mo. [...] 1 M Actions 1 GB Active Storage 40 GB Retained Storage [...] Business [...] 2.5 M Actions 2.5 GB Active Storage”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“50k executions [...] 1M executions included Pay as you go up to 20M [...] (30,000 runs × 2 steps per run) + 30,000 runs = 90,000 executions [...] A single durable function run or step execution”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Message retention
- Temporal
- Storage rather than a time window: 1 GB of active storage for open workflows and 40 GB retained for closed ones on Essentials, 2.5 GB active on Business. Temporal keeps workflow event history, so retention is bounded by bytes rather than by days — recorded without a magnitude because it is not the quantity this criterion ranks.
- Inngest
- Queue depth rather than a time window: 100,000 queued items on the free plan and 1,000,000 or more on Pro. Trace retention is 7 days on Pro and 90 on Enterprise.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Temporal ↗
“EVENT HISTORY AND RETENTION Storage Temporal stores workflow event history as Active storage for open workflows and Retained Storage for closed workflows [...] 1 GB Active Storage 40 GB Retained Storage”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Pricing — Inngest ↗
“100k queue depth [...] 1M+ queue depth [...] Granular tracing, metrics, alerts + 7 day trace retention [...] Advanced tracing, metrics, alerts + 90 day trace retention”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Which should you choose?
Choose Temporal if…
Long-running, stateful workflows where losing execution history is the failure that matters — Temporal keeps event history as first-class storage rather than logs that expire.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Inngest if…
Multi-step workflows that need durable execution and retries between steps, rather than a bare queue you write a consumer for.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Temporal: Entry is $100 a month before any usage, and the unit is an Action, which does not map onto messages or task runs — budgeting requires modelling your workflows, not counting jobs.
- Inngest: Every step is a billable execution, so a three-step workflow costs three times what the run count implies, and the free plan allows five concurrent steps.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Temporal or Inngest?
Temporal: $100/month for Essentials, including 1 million Actions, 1 GB active storage and 40 GB retained storage. Business starts at $500/month with 2.5 million Actions.
Inngest: $99/month for Pro, described as a starting price with usage above the included allowance billed on top.
Should I choose Temporal or Inngest?
Pick Temporal if Long-running, stateful workflows where losing execution history is the failure that matters — Temporal keeps event history as first-class storage rather than logs that expire.
Pick Inngest if Multi-step workflows that need durable execution and retries between steps, rather than a bare queue you write a consumer for.