head to head · open source
rancher vs Inngest
rancher has 25,924 GitHub stars, 3,221 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Inngest has 5,853 stars, 358 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 343% (25,924 vs 5,853 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Inngest is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Inngest 6%. rancher was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| rancher | Inngest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 358 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rancher if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Inngest if
- You want the Inngest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Inngest fits your workflow better
About rancher
Rancher is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based open source container management platform for organizations that deploy containers in production and need to run Kubernetes everywhere while meeting IT requirements and empowering DevOps teams.
read the full rancher overview →
About Inngest
Inngest is an open source workflow orchestration platform that lets developers write durable, event driven step functions in their existing language SDKs and run them on serverless, long running servers, or the edge.
read the full Inngest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or Inngest more popular?
rancher has 25,924 GitHub stars and Inngest has 5,853. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and Inngest free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Inngest has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between rancher and Inngest?
rancher is written in Go and Inngest in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rancher or Inngest?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (25,924 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Inngest if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.