DigitalOcean vs Inngest
The developer cloud — Droplets, Kubernetes, Managed DBs, App Platform
vs. Durable functions + event-driven workflows for modern apps
Pricing tiers
DigitalOcean
Functions (Serverless)
Free 90k GB-sec/month. $0.0000185 per GB-sec after.
$0 base (usage-based)
App Platform — Free
Static sites free forever. 3 static sites per account.
Free
Droplet — Basic 512MB
Shared CPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB SSD, 500 GiB transfer. Cheapest starting tier.
$4/mo
Spaces Object Storage
$5/month — 250 GB storage + 1 TB outbound. S3-compatible.
$5/mo
App Platform — Basic
$5/month per app. 512 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 1 GB bandwidth.
$5/mo
Droplet — Basic 1GB
Shared CPU, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB SSD.
$6/mo
Kubernetes (DOKS)
Starts at $12/month (1 node). Control plane free.
$12/mo
Droplet — Basic 2GB
1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD, 2 TB transfer.
$12/mo
Load Balancer
$12/month. Supports HTTP/3 + Let's Encrypt.
$12/mo
Managed Postgres — Basic
1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 10 GB SSD. Single node.
$15/mo
Droplet — CPU Optimized
2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM dedicated. Best for CPU-bound workloads.
$42/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Volume discounts, dedicated support.
Custom
Inngest
Free
$0. 50K steps/mo + 1K concurrent executions. 7-day log retention. 1 environment.
Free
OSS (self-host)
Free forever. Inngest Dev Server + self-hosted Inngest runtime. Apache 2.0.
$0 base (usage-based)
Starter
$20/mo. 250K steps/mo. 5K concurrency. 14-day retention. 3 envs.
$20/mo
Pro
$75/mo. 1M steps/mo. 10K concurrency. 30-day retention. Priority support.
$75/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SSO, HIPAA, dedicated clusters, self-host with Inngest Enterprise.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing functions on DigitalOcean vs free on Inngest.
| Metric | DigitalOcean | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
DigitalOcean · 14 features
- App Platform — Heroku-style PaaS. Deploy from Git. Auto-HTTPS, auto-scale, zero-downtime deploy…
- Backups — Weekly automated backups (20% of Droplet cost). Manual snapshots.
- Block Storage Volumes — SSD block storage attachable to Droplets. Snapshot support.
- DigitalOcean GenAI Platform — Managed AI agents, model-as-a-service (Llama, Mistral), knowledge bases.
- DNS — Free DNS hosting for your domains.
- DOKS (Kubernetes) — Managed Kubernetes. Free control plane. Node auto-repair.
- Droplets — Virtual machines with shared or dedicated CPU. 20+ one-click Marketplace images.
- Functions — Serverless functions. Node, Python, Go, PHP, Ruby. Pay-per-execution.
- Load Balancers — Layer 4/7 load balancing with HTTP/3 + Let's Encrypt.
- Managed Databases — Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, OpenSearch, Valkey. Automated backups + …
- Marketplace — 300+ one-click Droplet + Kubernetes apps.
- Monitoring — Built-in metrics + alerts for Droplets, DBs, Load Balancers.
- Spaces — S3-compatible object storage with built-in CDN.
- VPC — Private networking. Free. Automatic default VPC per region.
Inngest · 14 features
- AgentKit — Build AI agents as durable Inngest functions.
- Auto Retries — Configurable retries with exponential backoff.
- Concurrency Controls — Per-function and per-user concurrency limits.
- Cron Triggers — Scheduled functions via cron syntax.
- Debounce — Coalesce rapid-fire events into one execution.
- Dev Server — Local Inngest runtime for dev.
- Durable Steps — step.run, step.sleep, step.waitForEvent.
- Event System — Typed events with schemas.
- Fan Out / Batching — Process many events in parallel with batch control.
- Priority Lanes — Route premium customers to faster execution.
- Rate Limiting — Throttle events per key.
- Realtime — Stream function output to clients.
- Replay — Re-run past functions with new code.
- Self-Host — OSS runtime — run your own Inngest.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | DigitalOcean | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | doctl CLI | inngest-cli (dev server) |
| SDK | godo (Go), pydo (official py), python-digitalocean | inngestgo, inngest (Python), inngest (TS/Node) |
| REST | DigitalOcean REST API | Inngest REST API |
| MCP | DigitalOcean MCP | Inngest MCP |
| OTHER | — | Inngest Cloud Dashboard |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to DigitalOcean and Inngest are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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