Trigger.dev
Similar durable-background-task pitch to Inngest, open source (Apache 2.0). Good if you want the option to self-host later.
What is Trigger.dev?
Trigger.dev is a background jobs platform for running long-running or scheduled tasks outside your app's normal request/response cycle, things like sending batches of emails, processing webhooks, running AI workflows, or anything that shouldn't block a serverless function's timeout. You write jobs as regular TypeScript functions, and Trigger.dev handles retries, scheduling, concurrency, and observability around them. It occupies similar territory to Inngest, but is fully open source under Apache 2.0.
Key features
- Write background jobs as plain TypeScript with automatic retries and step-by-step observability in a dashboard
- Handles long-running tasks well beyond typical serverless function timeout limits
- Built-in support for scheduled/cron jobs, event-triggered jobs, and webhook handling
- Apache 2.0 licensed and self-hostable, so you're not locked into their cloud if pricing or terms change later
- Concurrency controls and queues to manage how many jobs run at once against rate-limited APIs
Who it's for
Apps that need reliable background job execution without standing up their own queue infrastructure, especially teams that value the self-hosting option as an escape hatch. If you're deep in the serverless world and only need simple delayed HTTP delivery, something lighter like Upstash QStash may be less to manage.
Pricing
Free tier for hobby projects, usage-based paid plans for production workloads. Self-hosting removes usage costs entirely at the expense of running the infrastructure yourself.