Compare / Sentry Crons
norc vs Sentry Crons
Sentry Crons adds cron monitoring to a product most infra teams already have open for error tracking, so the appeal is having everything in one place. It bills as an add-on to Sentry's base plan plus per-monitor overage, so the real cost includes whatever Sentry tier you're already on. Like the other monitors here, it watches the job and doesn't edit or deploy it.
| norc | Sentry Crons | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes · 1 cron monitor |
| Cheapest paid plan | $8/mo · 5 machines | $26/mo + $0.78/monitor |
| Value metric | flat tier by machines and jobs | per cron monitor |
| Jobs included | 15 free · 30 Pro · 150 Power (per account) | Billed per monitor |
| Reliability & security | ||
| Jobs keep running if the vendor is down | ✓ real cron runs them | n/a · monitors only |
| Needs inbound access or your SSH keys | No · outbound agent | No · receives pings |
| Preserves hand-edited crontab lines | ✓ only touches its own | n/a · never edits |
| Platform | ||
| Native apps | Desktop (macOS) · iOS · Android · CLI | Web · mobile app unmaintained |
| Monitoring | ||
| Cron-job failure / heartbeat monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Alerting channels | In app for now | Many |
| Self-host / on-prem | Agent runs on your machines | Yes · OSS |
| Management | ||
| Remotely edit & write cron jobs on your machines | ✓ | — |
| Plain-English schedule to cron expression (optional, bring your own key) | ✓ | — |
| One view of every machine’s jobs | ✓ | — |
Native apps: Competitor app availability checked against vendor sites and app stores in August 2026. “Web only” means no official native app was found at that time; third-party website wrappers are not counted.
Cron-job failure / heartbeat monitoring: Monitors are good at noticing a missed check-in, and norc does that too: it sweeps each job against its schedule and flags runs that never happened or failed. On top of that you get one view of every machine, schedule editing, and catch-up for runs missed while a machine was off (up to a cap).
Sentry Crons starts at $26/mo + $0.78/monitor. norc charges a flat tier by machines and jobs instead of per monitor, with job limits counted per account across all machines. See norc pricing.
norc vs Sentry Crons: common questions
- Is norc cheaper than Sentry Crons?
- Sentry Crons's cheapest paid plan is $26/mo + $0.78/monitor; norc's is $8/mo · 5 machines. The two use different pricing units, so it depends on your fleet: norc charges a flat tier by machines and jobs (free is 15 jobs on 2 machines, Pro 30 jobs on 5, Power 150 jobs on 25), rather than per monitor or per check.
- Can Sentry Crons edit cron jobs on my servers?
- Sentry Crons: —. norc: yes. Monitors are good at noticing a missed check-in, and norc does that too. It also writes the real crontab on each paired machine, touching only the jobs it manages, so you can add, change, or remove jobs without SSH or inbound ports.
- Does Sentry Crons have native desktop or mobile apps?
- Sentry Crons: Web · mobile app unmaintained. norc: Desktop (macOS) · iOS · Android · CLI. Most tools in this category are web dashboards only, which matters when a job never ran overnight and you want to fix it from a phone rather than find a laptop.
- Do my scheduled jobs keep running if Sentry Crons goes down?
- Sentry Crons: n/a · monitors only. norc: real cron runs them. norc never runs your jobs. The system cron daemon on your own machine does. A norc outage costs you visibility and remote editing, and the jobs keep running.
- Should I use Sentry Crons instead of norc?
- If your team already lives in Sentry for error tracking and performance, having cron failures show up in the triage view you already check daily is worth the add-on cost. There's no new tool to adopt.
Pricing and features as of August 2026. See the full compare matrix.