Cronitor Hacker plan (free forever, open to everyone; not a student or startup program) high confidence
The official pricing page (https://cronitor.io/pricing, fetched 2026-10-22) lists a Hacker plan at $0 with: 5 monitors (cron/scheduled job checks, website and API checks); 1 user; 1 status page with room for 50 subscribers; email, Slack, Discord, Teams and webhook alerts; a 100,000-event allowance for web analytics and errors (the fetched text does not say whether this resets monthly); checks run at most every 5 minutes. It excludes text-message and on-call alerts (PagerDuty, Datadog On-Call, OpsGenie, Splunk On-Call), browser-based checks, branded or private status pages, SAML SSO, role controls and SCIM. The pricing page says 'free forever' and describes the plan as 'Limited monitoring for homelabs and small projects.' The sign-up page (https://cronitor.io/sign-up) shows a 'FREE PLAN' callout reading '5 monitors, no credit card, and no trial clock.' This confirms the free tier exists as of 2026-10-22. It is a general free plan, not a student or startup offer. The tracker's '5 monitors' claim is corroborated by the official pages; the July 2026 tracker listing itself was not checked.
- Eligibility
- Anyone who signs up. No student, education, startup, nonprofit or open-source criteria, no application and no verification were found on any official page checked. Nothing in the official pages ties this plan to students or startups.
- How to claim
- Sign up at https://cronitor.io/sign-up with Google, GitHub or email and password. The fetched sign-up text shows no plan picker. Its payment section (card fields and a 'Start Free Trial' button, with 'You will not be charged until Nov. 05, 2026' as displayed on 2026-10-22) appears to belong to the 14-day Business trial, not the free plan. Whether the free plan can be chosen without entering a card, and whether it is the default after signup, was not verified in-app. Check the plan in account billing settings after signing up.
- Expiry
- None stated. The pricing page says 'free forever.' The terms page (https://cronitor.io/terms, last updated 2022 per the fetched copy) lets the company 'modify or discontinue the Service at any time' and 'suspend or terminate your access to our Service at any time', so the free plan carries no contractual guarantee.
- Gotchas
- (1) This is not a student or startup program. If the index only takes eligibility-gated offers, it does not qualify. (2) Hacker limits are narrow: one user, no SMS or on-call alerts, no browser checks, no branded or private status pages, no SSO, role controls or SCIM. (3) Monitors beyond the five included, or any paid feature, means a paid plan. Business is $2 per monitor per month plus $5 per user per month with no minimum, and it includes a 14-day free trial with card details required at sign-up. (4) The official pages were read through WebFetch summaries, so the quoted wording may not be byte-exact. (5) The terms page is dated 2022 per the fetched copy and may not match current plan structure.
- Source
- cronitor.io