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
Free 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.
At the limit Not stated The vendor does not say what happens at the limit, or we have not found it yet.
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenObserve Open-source logs, metrics, traces and RUM platform | Usage-based | Free tier | |
| Amazon CloudWatch AWS-native metrics, logs, alarms and tracing | Usage-based | Free tier | |
| GlitchTip Open-source error tracking (Sentry SDK compatible) | $15/mo | Free tier | |
| Honeybadger Error tracking, logging, uptime and status pages | $26/mo | Free tier | |
| AppSignal APM with errors, logs, hosts and uptime | $23.25/mo | Free tier | |
| OneUptime Open-source uptime, status pages, on-call, APM and logs | $22/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.
Sources read for this page