# Inngest vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks

> Inngest has a score of 66.3 (B) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is reliability, 25 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inngest-vs-orkes-conductor
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inngest-vs-orkes-conductor.md (~1,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inngest-vs-orkes-conductor.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/inngest-vs-orkes-conductor.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Inngest has a score of 66.3 (B) against Orkes Conductor Human tasks's 54.2 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is reliability, 25 points.

- Inngest: grade B, 66.3/100, rank #160 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/inngest.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/inngest.json
- Orkes Conductor Human tasks: grade C, 54.2/100, rank #327 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/orkes-conductor.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/orkes-conductor.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Inngest for reliability (+25), schema & documentation (+24), agent ergonomics (+7), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+7), transparency & trust (+10).

Pick Orkes Conductor Human tasks for security & auth (+11).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Inngest | Orkes Conductor Human tasks | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 57 | 32 | Inngest +25 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 65 | Inngest +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 69 | Inngest +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 60 | 71 | Orkes Conductor Human tasks +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Inngest +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 81 | Inngest +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 46 | Inngest +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.3 · B** | **54.2 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Inngest | Orkes Conductor Human tasks |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Inngest | Orkes |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://inn.gs/e/` | `https://developer.orkescloud.com/api` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | SSPL with delayed Apache-2.0 (server), Apache-2.0 (SDKs) | Apache-2.0 (Conductor OSS and SDKs), proprietary (Orkes Conductor) |
| Tools exposed | none | 19 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.conductor-oss/conductor-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-10 |
| Popularity | none | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Inngest.** Waits are durable and cost nothing while suspended, with runs up to 30 days on Free and 366 on Business. No reviewer inbox, Slack app or email, so the human side is your code.

**Orkes Conductor Human tasks.** Escalation chains with a time limit per assignee and a choice of leaving the task open or failing the workflow. No built-in Slack or email prompt, so alerts need a trigger policy and a second workflow.

## Before you call either

### Inngest

1. Use `step.waitForSignal()` when one run waits for one answer, and `waitForEvent` only when one answer resumes many runs
2. Register the wait before you send the approval request, or check the external state first, since early events are missed
3. Use a unique approval ID per tool call and `match` on it, so parallel approvals resolve independently
4. Treat `null` or `undefined` as a timeout and decide on purpose whether that rejects, approves or escalates
5. Set an event `id` when sending the answer, so a retried send is dropped within 24 hours

### Orkes Conductor Human tasks

1. Give every assignment you want to escalate from a non-zero `slaMinutes`, since 0 never expires and nothing can follow it
2. Pick `TERMINATE` for risky actions so an unanswered approval fails the workflow instead of staying open to anyone
3. Start approval workflows with an `idempotencyKey` and `RETURN_EXISTING`, so a retried start doesn't ask twice
4. Refresh the JWT from `/api/token` with a set expiry instead of requesting one that never expires
5. Fetch single doc pages, not llms.txt, which is the whole documentation in 2.57 MB

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