Cronitor costs $10/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $360 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$10/mo solo ($120/yr), $50/mo team is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Pingcron: the pay-once alternative
Pingcron does the same core job for $29, once. Your jobs ping a URL when they run — Pingcron alerts you when a ping is late or missing.
| Pingcron | Cronitor | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $10/mo solo ($120/yr), $50/mo team |
| Cost over 3 years | $29 | $360+ |
| Checks | Unlimited | Tiered |
| Your data | On your box (one SQLite file) | Their cloud |
| Cron expressions + timezones | Yes | Yes |
| Run duration tracking (start/end) | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop app | Yes | No |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
Cronitor charges $360 over three years. Pingcron is $29, once — it pays for itself in 3 months.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need Cronitor's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Pingcron is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Pingcron — $29, once
Your jobs ping a URL when they run — Pingcron alerts you when a ping is late or missing.