Inbar Fridman started on classical piano at six and studied it for seven years before losing interest. She found her way to jazz through guitar and a high school music teacher who played her Pat Metheny; she has described being "blown away" by how little his playing matched what she expected jazz guitar to sound like. She began formal jazz study at 16 at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in Israel, and in 1999 moved to New Jersey to complete a Bachelor of Music in jazz performance, with honors, at William Paterson University, where she studied under guitarist Gene Bertoncini, pianists Harold Mabern and James Williams, and trombonist John Mosca.

While based in New York, Fridman performed at Smalls, Fat Cat, the 55 Bar, and the Blue Note, working alongside saxophonists Myron Walden and Will Vinson, pianist Aaron Goldberg, guitarist Steve Cardenas, and pianist/vocalist Harry Whitaker. She moved back to Israel in 2005 and has toured Europe and Israel regularly ever since.

Her recording career as a leader grew out of European touring rather than a New York scene. Playing internationally with groups led by French bassist Olivier Gatto, alongside pianist Camelia Ben Naceur and drummer Billy Cobham, Fridman and Ben Naceur developed enough of a rapport to found their own project, the Time Quartet, with bassist Laurent Chavoit and drummer Stefano Lucchini. In September 2011 the quartet recorded for four days at a studio in the French Pyrenees; the result, Time Quartet Project, was released on the American label Origin Records in January 2013 and was later named to critic W. Royal Stokes's list of Notable Instrumental Jazz CDs of that year. Reviewing the album for Something Else!, Esther Berlanga-Ryan wrote that Fridman's guitar was "delicate and wise beyond her years" on a record built around collective, non-hierarchical playing.

After roughly thirty years spent almost entirely on instrumental jazz, Fridman changed direction in 2023, writing and releasing her own lyrics for the first time under the title Shirey A-Hava ("Songs of Love"). The first confirmed single from that project, "Migdalim," features fellow Israeli musician Katia Toobool on keyboards alongside Daniel Ashkenazy. The same year, she recorded Early Afternoons, a duo album of jazz standards with bassist Shlomi Mantsur, built around songs including Cole Porter's "So in Love" and the standard "Poinciana." She has described the session's approach plainly: "My goal was to be as free as possible in our playing... we took the songs we like the best... pressed 'record,' and saw what happened."

Her fourth album as a leader, Mercy, followed on August 8, 2025 on the American label Adhyâropa Records, again with Katia Toobool on keys, alongside bassist Lior Ozeri and drummer Yogev Gabay. Fridman is also a Reunion Blues artist endorser.

Fridman's playing has been described consistently across more than a decade of reviews in strikingly similar terms: All About Jazz's Dan McClenaghan calls her sound "ego-less and chamber-like, lyrical, beautiful, and tranquil, underlain by vibrant energy and momentum," while The Jazzword's John Barron points to her "mellow tone and melodic approach." Both describe a guitarist working in a lyrical, small-ensemble, largely acoustic-leaning idiom rather than a fusion or hard-driving post-bop style, an approach traceable to her formative discovery of Pat Metheny and reinforced by her studies with the chamber-jazz-associated guitarist Gene Bertoncini. Her 2023 turn to original lyric writing after three decades of instrumental work, and her 2023 standards duo record with Shlomi Mantsur, both extend that same melodic, unhurried sensibility into new formats rather than departing from it.