Overview
Cronitor started as a cron job monitor and that is still its core: its SDKs and API capture the status, metrics and output of each run and alert when a job fails or never starts. It works with any kind of background job, not just cron.
It has grown into a general developer monitor: uptime and API checks with assertions from 12+ locations, synthetic browser checks, heartbeats for any event stream, status pages, and a lightweight analytics and RUM product for website traffic and performance.
The free Hacker plan gives 5 monitors with 5-minute checks. Business is pay-per-use: $2 per monitor and $5 per dashboard user each month, with 30-second checks, 12 months of data and SMS and on-call integrations. That model is cheap for a handful of jobs and grows linearly with monitor count.
Pricing and plans
checked 28 Sept 2026Free tier · no card
Hacker plan: 5 monitors, 5-minute fastest checks, email and Slack alerts, 1 basic status page with 50 subscribers, 1 user, first 100k RUM events free. No SMS or premium integrations.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hacker | $0 | 5 monitors, 5-minute checks, email and Slack alerts, basic status page |
| Business | $2/monitor/mo + $5/user/mo | 30-second checks, 12-month retention, SMS, PagerDuty/Opsgenie, multiple environments; SAML SSO +$5/user |
| Enterprise | From $6,000/yr | 5-second checks, unlimited status pages, dedicated engineer, invoice billing |
What it does
- Cron job monitoring
- Captures the status, metrics and output of each scheduled or background job run.
- Uptime and API checks
- Checks from 12+ locations with custom assertions, down to 30 seconds on Business.
- Heartbeats
- Send events from any system and alert on missing or abnormal activity.
- Status pages
- Public or internal pages; branded and private pages are paid add-ons.
- Real user monitoring
- Traffic, errors and performance from real visitors; first 100k events free.
- Browser checks
- Synthetic browser checks at $1 per 1,000 runs.
Strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Records job status, metrics and output, not just a ping.
- Combines job, uptime and heartbeat monitoring with status pages.
- Transparent per-monitor pricing with a free tier.
- Checks every 30 seconds on Business.
Limitations
- Free plan is limited to 5 monitors with 5-minute checks and no SMS.
- Per-monitor pricing adds up for large fleets of jobs.
- Branded and private status pages cost $25 and $50 a month extra.
- SAML SSO costs an extra $5 per user a month.
Who it suits
Good for
- Teams with many important scheduled jobs
- Small SaaS apps wanting job and uptime monitoring together
- Developers who want job output history
Look elsewhere if
- Large numbers of monitors on a tight budget
- APM, tracing or log management
Alternatives to Cronitor
| Tool | From | Free option | Stages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon CloudWatch AWS-native metrics, logs, alarms and tracing | Usage-based | Free tier | |
| AppSignal APM with errors, logs, hosts and uptime | $23.25/mo | Free tier | |
| Axiom Log and event data platform | $25/mo | Free tier | |
| Better Stack Uptime, logs, errors and incident management | $29/mo | Free tier | |
| Checkly Synthetic and uptime monitoring as code | $24/mo | Free tier | |
| GlitchTip Open-source error tracking (Sentry SDK compatible) | $15/mo | Free tier |
Questions
Is Cronitor free?
Yes, the Hacker plan includes 5 monitors, email and Slack alerts and a basic status page.
How much does Cronitor Business cost?
$2 per monitor and $5 per user each month, billed on usage after a 14-day trial.
How often can Cronitor check a website?
Every 5 minutes on Hacker, every 30 seconds on Business and every 5 seconds on Enterprise.
What is the difference between Cronitor and Healthchecks.io?
Both monitor cron jobs; Cronitor also records job metrics and output and adds uptime checks, RUM and status pages, while Healthchecks.io is simpler and open source.
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