LastPing vs Cronitor — the free Cronitor alternative for cron and pipeline monitoring
LastPing is a free Cronitor alternative with no monitor cap and no paid tier. Cron/heartbeat monitoring, HTTP uptime probing, and CI/CD pipeline monitoring — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins via one signed webhook — all included, all free, fully hosted.
The free-tier math
The comparison most people are actually here for.
Cronitor — free plan
- Capped at 5 monitors
- CI/CD & pipeline monitoring on paid plans
- Team features, SMS/phone alerting on paid plans
- Polished commercial product with paid support
LastPing — free, full stop
- No monitor cap — heartbeat, HTTP, and CI/CD
- CI/CD monitoring included: one signed webhook, zero YAML
- Routing matrix, custom alert templates, status pages, badges
- No paid tier exists — no card, no trial clock
The honest verdict, up front
Cronitor is a mature, polished commercial product. If you need team accounts, SMS or phone-call alerting, or a vendor with paid support and years of production history behind it, Cronitor is a strong choice and we won't argue otherwise.
LastPing is the better pick when you want everything scheduled monitored without a monitor budget. Five free monitors go fast — a couple of cron jobs, a backup, an endpoint, and you're choosing what not to monitor. LastPing is uncapped and free with no paid tier, and treats CI/CD pipelines as first-class monitors at no cost: one signed webhook from GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins catches runs that fail, hang, or never start, with a deep link to the run and the failure detail on the incident.
Feature by feature
Only rows we can stand behind. Where Cronitor wins, the table says so.
| Capability | LastPing | Cronitor |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✓ Free — no monitor cap, no paid tier | ◐ Free up to 5 monitors; paid plans beyond |
| Cron / heartbeat monitoring | ✓ Curl a ping URL; cron or simple-interval schedules, grace windows, time zones | ✓ Mature, with rich run telemetry |
| CI/CD pipeline monitoring | ✓ Included free — one signed webhook (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins), zero YAML | ◐ Available on paid plans |
| Catches hung or never-started CI runs | ✓ Started-but-hung, failed, and never-ran all open incidents | ◐ On paid plans, via its pipeline features |
| CI failure detail on the incident | ✓ Deep link to the run + optional failure-log excerpt captured on the incident | ◐ Paid feature set |
| HTTP / uptime probing | ✓ Status code, latency, keyword checks | ✓ |
| Custom alert message templates | ✓ Per event type, with live preview — free | ◐ Advanced alerting sits in paid plans |
| Alert channels | ◐ Email, Telegram, Slack, Discord, signed webhook — no SMS/phone | ✓ Broad, including SMS and phone-call alerts on paid plans |
| Teams & multi-user | ✗ Single-user today (top roadmap item) | ✓ On paid plans |
| Public status pages | ✓ Included free, with embeddable badges | ✓ |
| Track record | ◐ New — built in public, monitors itself with itself | ✓ Years of commercial production use |
Cronitor's plans and features are theirs to define and change — check cronitor.io for current details. This table reflects our understanding at the time of writing and we correct it when it drifts.
Questions people ask
Front-loaded answers — the most important fact first.
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Is there a free alternative to Cronitor?
Yes — LastPing is a free Cronitor alternative with no monitor cap and no paid tier. It covers cron/heartbeat monitoring, HTTP uptime probing, and CI/CD pipeline monitoring (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins via one signed webhook), all free and fully hosted.
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How does Cronitor's free tier compare to LastPing?
Cronitor's free plan is capped at 5 monitors, and pipeline/CI monitoring belongs to its paid plans. LastPing has no monitor cap and no paid tier: unlimited heartbeat, HTTP, and CI/CD monitors, with alerting, routing, status pages, and badges all included free.
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When is Cronitor the better choice?
If you need team accounts, SMS or phone-call alerting, or a polished commercial product with years of production history and paid support, Cronitor is a strong choice. LastPing is single-user today, alerts via email, Telegram, Slack, Discord, and webhooks (no SMS), and is a newer product built in public.
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Can LastPing monitor CI/CD pipelines for free?
Yes. CI/CD monitoring is a first-class, free feature in LastPing: one signed webhook from GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins — zero YAML changes — catches runs that fail, hang, or never start, deep-links to the run, and can attach the failure log excerpt to the incident. GitHub Actions guide →
Monitor everything scheduled. Pay nothing.
One curl for cron jobs, one signed webhook for CI. No monitor budget, no card, no trial clock — there is no paid tier to upsell you into.