TrigRun vs Cronitor
Detailed comparison of TrigRun and Cronitor. TrigRun executes scheduled HTTP jobs; Cronitor monitors jobs running elsewhere. Understand the difference.
Cronitor and TrigRun solve different problems. Cronitor monitors cron jobs running on your infrastructure. TrigRun executes HTTP requests on a schedule so you don't need infrastructure. They are complementary — you could use both.
The fundamental difference
| TrigRun | Cronitor | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Executes HTTP requests on a schedule | Monitors jobs running elsewhere |
| Infrastructure needed | None — TrigRun IS your cron | You need your own servers, crontab, or Kubernetes |
| On failure | Automatically retries with exponential backoff | Sends you an alert |
| Core question it answers | "Run this webhook every 5 minutes" | "Did my backup script run last night?" |
If you are searching for a "Cronitor alternative" because you want someone to run your scheduled jobs (not just watch them), TrigRun is what you need.
Feature comparison
| Feature | TrigRun | Cronitor |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free 500 exec/mo, Pro 50k exec/mo, Team 200k exec/mo | $2/monitor/mo + $5/user/mo |
| Job execution | Yes — makes HTTP calls on schedule | No — only observes |
| Job scheduling | Yes — define URL + cron expression | No — reads your existing schedule |
| Retry logic | Exponential backoff, configurable | No (does not execute) |
| Secret management | AES-256-GCM encrypted vault | No |
| Notifications | Webhook, Slack, Discord, Email | Slack, Teams, Discord, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, SMS, Email, + more |
| Uptime monitoring | No | Yes — HTTP, TCP, browser checks from 11 regions |
| Status pages | No | Yes — public and private, custom domains |
| Real User Monitoring | No | Yes — cookie-free analytics (Core Web Vitals) |
| CLI | trigrun | cronitor CLI (Go) with crontab auto-discovery |
| SDKs | — | Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET |
| MCP / AI agent support | Native MCP server, llms.txt / llms-full.txt | MCP server in CLI |
| Crontab import | Yes (bulk import) | Yes (auto-discovers from crontab) |
| Execution history | Full HTTP response details, 1-day Free / 30-day Pro / 90-day Team retention | Duration and state tracking, 12-month retention |
| Multi-region | Single-region execution | 11 monitoring regions, multi-region verification |
Where TrigRun wins
Zero infrastructure
TrigRun eliminates the need for servers, crontab, or container orchestration. Give it a URL and a schedule — it handles execution, retries, and logging. With Cronitor, you still need to run and maintain your own job infrastructure.
Automatic retries
When your target server returns an error, TrigRun retries with exponential backoff. Cronitor cannot retry because it does not execute jobs — it can only alert you that something failed.
Encrypted secrets
TrigRun's secret:// syntax resolves AES-256-GCM encrypted credentials at execution time. Cronitor does not manage secrets because it does not make HTTP requests.
Simpler pricing for job execution
TrigRun charges per execution with clear plan tiers. Cronitor's per-monitor pricing ($2/monitor/month) scales linearly — 100 monitors costs $200/month before adding per-user fees.
Where Cronitor wins
Uptime and synthetic monitoring
Cronitor checks your endpoints from 11 global regions every 30 seconds (or 5 seconds on Enterprise). It verifies downtime from multiple locations before alerting, reducing false positives. TrigRun does not offer uptime monitoring.
Status pages
Cronitor provides public and private status pages with custom domains, automatic incident creation, RSS feeds, and maintenance window support. TrigRun does not have status pages.
Richer alerting integrations
Cronitor integrates with PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Splunk On-Call, Telegram, Google Chat, and more alerting tools than TrigRun currently supports.
Real User Monitoring
Cronitor offers cookie-free analytics as a Google Analytics alternative — Core Web Vitals, page load breakdown, JavaScript error tracking. This is entirely outside TrigRun's scope.
Mature SDK ecosystem
Cronitor has official SDKs in 6 languages (Python, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, Java, .NET) and a Go-based CLI with crontab auto-discovery.
12-month data retention
Cronitor retains monitoring data for 12 months on Business plans. TrigRun retains execution logs for up to 30 days (Pro) or 90 days (Team).
Using them together
TrigRun and Cronitor are complementary:
- TrigRun schedules and executes your HTTP jobs
- Cronitor independently verifies they actually ran and alerts if they stop
This gives you both execution and independent monitoring — the belt-and-suspenders approach for critical scheduled jobs.
Who should use what
Choose TrigRun if: You want a managed service to execute scheduled HTTP requests without running your own infrastructure. You need retries, secrets, and execution history — not just monitoring.
Choose Cronitor if: You already have cron jobs running on your own servers and want observability, alerting, and status pages. You need uptime monitoring, synthetic checks, or Real User Monitoring.
Use both if: You want TrigRun to handle execution and Cronitor as an independent watchdog to verify everything runs on schedule.