Cron job, heartbeat and uptime monitoring. Free Hacker plan with 5 monitors and a status page.
Sniffed 8d ago14 day free trialNo card needed#cron-monitoring#heartbeat#uptime#scheduled-jobs#status-page
Get an alert when a job fails, runs late or never runs. Cronitor monitors cron jobs, scheduled tasks, heartbeats, uptime checks and APIs, and alerts you when a job fails, runs late or never runs. Its Hacker plan is $0 and the pricing page calls it free forever: 5 monitors, email and Slack alerts, a basic status page with 50 subscribers, one dashboard user, 5-minute checks and 100,000 web analytics and error events. SMS alerts and premium integrations are paid. The Business plan has no base fee and charges $2 a month per monitor and $5 a month per user, with a 14-day free trial. Capterra reviewers praise easy setup and quick support, though many of those reviews were vendor-referred with an incentive.
Free tier quotas
Plan
Hacker, $0 free forever
Monitors
5 (jobs, checks and heartbeats)
Alerts
Email and chat alerts such as Slack, Discord, Teams and webhooks
Status page
1 basic status page with 50 included subscribers
Dashboard users
1
Fastest check frequency
5 minutes
Web analytics and errors
100,000 events free
Not included
SMS alerts, on-call integrations, premium integrations, synthetic browser checks, branded or private status pages
Last sniffed Oct 17, 2026. Always confirm on the official pricing page.
👍 Good boy
+The Hacker plan is free forever with 5 monitors, email and chat alerts and a basic status page.
+Business pricing has no base fee and no minimum: $2 a month per monitor and $5 a month per user. The page's example of 20 monitors and 3 users comes to $55 a month.
+Capterra reviewers praised easy setup, a flexible API, a CLI, many integrations and fast, effective support.
+A non-incentivized Capterra review listed ease of setup and a generous free tier as pros.
+Business checks run as often as every 30 seconds, and it keeps 12 months of data and offers SMS and on-call alerts.
+One product covers cron jobs, heartbeats, uptime checks and basic web analytics, so a small team does not need separate tools.
+Business includes a 14-day free trial, per the pricing page.
👎 Watch out
−Free is 5 monitors and one user, with 5-minute checks. A Capterra reviewer noted that admin, user and read-only roles are not in the free version.
−SMS alerts and on-call integrations (PagerDuty, Datadog On-Call, OpsGenie, Splunk On-Call) are paid only.
−A branded status page is $25 a month per page and a private page is $50 a month per page on Business, so status pages get expensive.
−Capterra reviewers asked for schedules with exceptions, such as weekdays only, and for alerts to ignore a job that finishes early but not one that runs late.
−A Capterra reviewer wished monitors could track CPU and memory use while a job runs, and another asked for more documentation on complex setups.
−Many Capterra reviews are labeled 'Vendor Referred - Incentive Offered', and the visible ones date from 2022, so the praise there is a weaker signal.
−Per-monitor pricing adds up. A competing product's founder, in an r/SideProject post, said Cronitor charges extra for status pages. Treat that as a competitor's view.
The catch
Five monitors disappear fast. A few cron jobs, a backup and a heartbeat uses them up, and the next monitor costs $2 a month on Business once you move off Hacker.
The free plan has one dashboard user, 5-minute checks and no SMS. Alerts go to email and chat tools like Slack, and anything that pages a person, such as PagerDuty or SMS, needs Business.
Cronitor's pricing page says the Business plan has a 14-day free trial. The page does not say whether the Hacker plan needs a card, and I did not find a commercial use clause.
What’s included
✓Cron job monitoring
✓Heartbeat monitoring
✓Uptime checks
✓Status pages
✓Email and Slack alerts
✓CLI and API
✓Web analytics and error events
✓Synthetic browser checks (paid)
✓SMS and on-call alerts (paid)
Free tier value
Generosity
B
Estimated value
Free cron and heartbeat monitoring for 5 jobs
Feature parity
Business has no base fee: $2 a month per monitor and $5 a month per user.
Screenshots
Cronitor homepageCronitor pricing page
Paid plans
Business, $2 a month per monitor and $5 a month per user
No base fee or minimum. 14-day free trial, 30-second checks, all 11 alert integrations, SMS and on-call alerts, 12-month retention and unlimited API requests. Example from the page: 20 monitors and 3 users is $55 a month.
Business add-ons
Branded status page $25 a month per page, private page $50 a month per page, SAML single sign-on +$5 a month per user, web analytics $10 a month per 100,000 events and synthetic browser checks $1 a month per 1,000 checks.
Enterprise, from $6,000 a year
Annual invoice billing with custom features and integrations, a dedicated engineer and priority support.
Common questions
Does Cronitor have a free plan?
Yes. Hacker is $0 free forever with 5 monitors, email and Slack alerts, a basic status page and one dashboard user.
How does Business pricing work?
$2 a month per monitor and $5 a month per user, with no base fee. There is a 14-day free trial.
Can it page me by SMS on the free plan?
No. SMS alerts and on-call integrations are Business features.
Are the Capterra reviews independent?
Many are labeled vendor referred with an incentive. One I saw was non-incentivized and praised easy setup and a generous free tier.
Does it work with any cron job?
Capterra reviewers describe integrating through the CLI or manually with simple requests. Check the docs for your scheduler.
Change history
Checked October 22, 2026
Pricing page read. Capterra and Reddit read as excerpts; most visible Capterra reviews were vendor-referred and are labeled that way. Card requirement and commercial use not confirmed.
