Hangfire vs Inngest
Hangfire
hangfire.io
Inngest
inngest.comSide by side
| Figure | Hangfire | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $41.67/mo | $99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 4 |
| Spec score · Task Queue Software | 9.1 (#2) | 9.1 (#3) |
| Company size | The Estonian registry data reports three employees for Hangfire OÜ in its 2025 annual-report figures. | LinkedIn lists Inngest as a privately held software-development company with 11–50 employees. |
| Documentation depth | The documentation includes getting-started guides, installation, ASP.NET Core setup, dashboard authorization, storage configuration and deployment guidance. | Documentation includes concepts, quick starts, limits, SDK references, deployment, operations, examples, MCP and LLM-friendly documentation. |
| Integrations | The documentation lists integrations with ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core, console applications, Windows Services, WCF, Nancy, and ServiceStack. | The documentation describes integrations for Vercel and Netlify deployment syncs, Neon database events, and Datadog and Prometheus monitoring. |
| Licence | Hangfire Core is open source under LGPLv3, with commercial licensing available for private forks and modifications. | The server and CLI use the Server Side Public License with delayed Apache 2.0 publication, while SDKs use Apache 2.0. |
| Purpose | Hangfire performs background processing in .NET and .NET Core applications without requiring a Windows Service or separate process. | Inngest orchestrates asynchronous code as durable functions for event driven workflows, background jobs, and agents. |
| What it does | Hangfire runs .NET and .NET Core methods as durable background jobs without requiring a separate Windows Service or process. | Inngest runs durable, observable workflows and agents in existing application code, retrying failed steps and preserving their results. |
Plans
In their own words
Hangfire
Hangfire runs background jobs in.NET and.NET Core applications without requiring a Windows Service or a separate process. It supports fire-and-forget, delayed and recurring jobs, as well as continuations, and stores jobs persistently. SQL Server and Redis are officially supported storage options, with other community-driven implementations also available. A built-in web dashboard shows processing activity and each job's state. Hangfire describes its processing as at-least-once, with automatic retries after unhandled exceptions or application termination. It can run across multiple machines and coordinates their work automatically. Listed integrations include ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core, console applications, Windows Services, WCF, Nancy and ServiceStack. Hangfire Core is open source under LGPLv3 and free for commercial use. The Open plan is free. Startup costs $500 a year, Business $1,500 a year, and Enterprise $4,500 a year, all billed per organization annually. Pro adds batches and batch continuations; Ace adds throttling features for concurrency and rate limits. Dashboard access is local by default, so remote access needs authorization configuration.
Inngest
Inngest runs asynchronous code as durable functions for event-driven workflows, background jobs, and agents. Its execution steps handle retries, retain state, and recover from failures; traces show activity from trigger to completion. Flow controls manage concurrency and fairness when users compete for resources. Developers can use open-source SDKs for TypeScript, Python, and Go, or the REST API. Functions can run wherever an app is hosted, with deployment guides for services including Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, Render, and DigitalOcean. Inngest also describes isolated sandboxes for testing changes and tools for scoring and comparing variants on production traffic. The Free plan includes 5 seats, 50k executions, 500k events ingested, and 24-hour trace history. Execution pauses when the free quota is reached until the account upgrades. Pro starts at $99/mo. Inngest states that it is SOC 2 Type II compliant, and that its US-based databases are encrypted at rest and application traffic uses TLS/SSL in transit.