head to head · open source
rancher vs Inngest
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars, 3,225 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Inngest has 6,013 stars, 386 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 333% (26,031 vs 6,013 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%. Inngest 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 | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 386 |
| 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 Rancher is an open source container management platform built for organizations that deploy containers in production. Rancher makes it easy to run Kubernetes everywhere, meet IT requirements, and empower DevOps teams. Stable Release v2.15.1 rancher/rancher:v2.15.1 / rancher/rancher:stable Read the full release notes. To get automated notifications of our latest release, you can watch the announcements category in our forums, or subscribe to the RSS feed Quick Start sudo docker run d restart=unless stopped p 80:80 p 443:443 privileged rancher/rancher Open your browser to Installation See…
read the full rancher overview →
About Inngest
Inngest's durable functions replace queues, state management, and scheduling to enable any developer to write reliable step functions faster without touching infrastructure. 1. Write durable functions using any of our language SDKs 2. Run the Inngest Dev Server for a complete local development experience, with production parity. 3. Deploy your functions to your own infrastructure 4. Sync your application's functions with the Inngest Platform or a self hosted Inngest server. 5. Inngest invokes your functions securely via HTTPS whenever triggering events are received. An example durable function Inngest Functions…
read the full Inngest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or Inngest more popular?
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars and Inngest has 6,013. 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 (26,031 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.