Pingcron and Cronitor solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $29, the other is a subscription at $10/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| 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 |
What Pingcron does well
- Two schedule types — "Expected every N minutes/hours" or a full 5-field cron expression with timezone support and a live next-3-runs preview.
- Grace periods — Allow N seconds of lateness per check before alerting — no false alarms because a backup ran 40 seconds long.
- Alerts on transitions only — Webhook (Slack/Discord/ntfy-friendly JSON) + SMTP email on down, recovery and explicit failure. Never spams repeats, survives restarts without re-firing.
- Rich ping API — GET or POST /ping/:token, /start for run-duration tracking, /fail for explicit failures — ping bodies stored as logs.
What Cronitor still does better
There's a real reason Cronitor costs what it does: a bigger team, broader integrations and dedicated support behind it. If that ecosystem is genuinely what you need, it's worth paying for.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on Cronitor's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $10/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Pingcron pays for itself and then some: cronitor charges $360 over three years. Pingcron is $29, once — it pays for itself in 3 months.
Try Pingcron — $29, once
Your jobs ping a URL when they run — Pingcron alerts you when a ping is late or missing.