Shopify vs Inngest
Dominant SaaS commerce platform — Online Store + Hydrogen headless
vs. Durable functions + event-driven workflows for modern apps
Pricing tiers
Shopify
Starter
$5/mo. Sell via social/chat links. No checkout site. Basic.
$5/mo
Basic
$29/mo ($19 annual). Full store. 2.9% + 30¢ online. 2 staff.
$29/mo
Shopify
$79/mo ($49 annual). 2.7% online. 5 staff.
$79/mo
Advanced
$299/mo ($229 annual). 2.5% online. Custom reports. 15 staff.
$299/mo
Plus
$2,300/mo (starting). Enterprise features, checkout customization, unlimited staff.
$2300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. For $1M+ GMV merchants. Dedicated support, Checkout Extensibility.
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 starter on Shopify vs free on Inngest.
| Metric | Shopify | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Shopify · 22 features
- Admin APIs — REST + GraphQL for management.
- App Store — 8,000+ apps.
- B2B (Plus) — Company accounts + catalogs.
- Checkout — Shopify-managed checkout (PCI-compliant).
- Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions in checkout (Plus).
- Collections — Manual + smart grouping.
- Customers — CRM-lite + B2B (Plus).
- Discounts — Automatic + code-based.
- Hydrogen — React/Remix headless framework.
- Inventory — Multi-location stock.
- Markets — Multi-region selling (currency, language).
- Online Store — Default Liquid-based storefront.
- Orders + Fulfillment — Multi-location fulfillment.
- Oxygen — Edge hosting for Hydrogen (Plus).
- Products + Variants — Full PIM.
- Shipping + Rates — Carrier integrations.
- Shopify Functions — Rust/WASM backend extensions.
- Shopify Payments — First-party payment processor.
- Shop Pay — Accelerated checkout with saved payment.
- Storefront API — GraphQL for custom storefronts.
- Theme Store — First-party + paid themes.
- Webhooks — Event subscriptions.
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 | Shopify | Inngest |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | shopify CLI | inngest-cli (dev server) |
| SDK | @shopify/admin-api-client, @shopify/hydrogen | inngestgo, inngest (Python), inngest (TS/Node) |
| REST | Admin REST API | Inngest REST API |
| GRAPHQL | Admin GraphQL API, Storefront API | — |
| MCP | Shopify MCP (unofficial) | Inngest MCP |
| OTHER | Liquid Templates, Shopify Admin, Shopify Webhooks | Inngest Cloud Dashboard |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Shopify and Inngest may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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