If your app needs to run background jobs, scheduled tasks, or multi-step AI-agent workflows reliably, two names come up constantly in 2026: Inngest and Trigger.dev. Both solve the same core problem — making sure background work actually finishes, retries on failure, and resumes where it left off — but they take noticeably different approaches. This guide breaks down how they compare and which one fits your situation.
The core difference in one line
Inngest is an SDK you drop into an existing app: you keep writing normal functions and it adds durability with minimal ceremony. Trigger.dev is an open-source platform that owns execution: you deploy your tasks to its infrastructure and get long-running, no-timeout jobs. Neither is strictly better — it depends on how much you want to own.
Side by side
| Inngest | Trigger.dev | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | SDK inside your app | Platform that runs your tasks |
| Open source | Partial (SDKs Apache 2.0, server SSPL) | Fully open source (Apache 2.0), self-hostable |
| Long-running tasks | Serverless-friendly, step-based | No timeouts — built for long jobs and agent loops |
| Pricing | Free Hobby tier, Pro $99/mo | Free credits, Hobby $10/mo, Pro $50/mo |
| Best for | Adding durability fast to an existing app | Long/agent workloads + full open-source control |
Inngest: durability with the least friction
Inngest's biggest strength is low migration cost. You add its SDK, keep writing standard TypeScript, Python or Go functions, and each step becomes independently retried, idempotent and resumable — without standing up queues or state stores. Built-in flow control (per-tenant concurrency, throttling, rate limiting) is genuinely useful for SaaS and AI workloads that fan out, and it is proven in production at companies like Replit, ElevenLabs and Resend. The honest caveat: the server is source-available (SSPL), not fully open source, and hosted pricing (Pro $99/mo, then per-execution) can climb at high volume.
Trigger.dev: a platform for long-running work
Trigger.dev shines when your background work is genuinely long-running or agent-like. Because you deploy tasks to its own infrastructure, jobs can run with no timeout — multi-minute processing, agent loops, big batches — with real-time progress streaming to your frontend. It is fully open source (Apache 2.0) and self-hostable, a real edge over Inngest if avoiding lock-in matters. The trade-off: it is more of a platform with a little more setup than dropping in an SDK, and its compute-per-second pricing is flexible but harder to predict than a flat plan.
Which should you pick?
Pick Inngest if you want the lowest-friction way to add durable, retryable steps to an app you already have, and you are comfortable with a source-available server.
Pick Trigger.dev if your jobs are long-running or agent-style, or you want fully open-source, self-hostable control over where execution happens.
For many teams the decision comes down to feel — SDK-in-your-app versus platform-owns-execution — more than raw capability. Both are strong, modern choices; try each on a small real workflow before committing. You can explore the full profiles of Inngest and Trigger.dev for pricing, alternatives and honest pros and cons.