Northflank Cron Jobs
Run repository or image-based jobs on a schedule alongside services and databases.
- Card required
- No
Northflank Cron Jobs scores 6.2/10 for free value in Schedulers. The main constraint: Sandbox pricing lists always-on compute, 2 free services, 1 free database, and 2 free cron jobs; verify current free limits.
Free value score
6.2 / 10Show the math
Key metrics
What you get
Scheduled cron jobs from images or repositories
Works next to services and databases
Free sandbox includes cron jobs
Gotchas
- 2 free cron jobs
The Sandbox tier includes exactly 2 free cron job resources; any additional jobs require a paid plan.
- 2 free services
The free Sandbox tier caps you at 2 deployment services in total alongside your cron jobs.
- 1 free database
Only one managed database addon is included in the free Sandbox tier.
- 2 free projects
Free tier limits you to 2 projects for organizing all your Northflank resources.
- Limited compute plans
Sandbox tier only allows limited/smaller compute plan sizes; vertical scaling is described as 'Limited' in the feature comparison.
- No high availability or backups
Free sandbox tier does not include high availability replicas, database backups, or zonal redundancy for production workloads.
- BYOC limited to 1 cloud provider
Bring-your-own-cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) is restricted to 1 linked cloud provider on the free tier vs. unlimited on paid plans.
- Hobby/testing positioning only
Northflank explicitly positions the Sandbox tier for testing and building trust, not production use.
- Shared compute resources
Free-tier jobs run on shared vCPU plans (e.g. nf-compute-10 at 0.1 shared vCPU / 256 MB), providing significantly less performance than dedicated plans.
Sources
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"Sandbox for testing and building trust with Northflank ... Always-on-compute – no sleeping :) 2× free services; 1× free database; 2× free cron jobs"
https://northflank.com/pricing -
"This free plan allows you to deploy: 2 services; 2 jobs; 1 addon; Up to 1 BYOC cluster. Our free tier is a great way to explore the platform ... However, it should not be used for production applications."
https://northflank.com/docs/v1/application/billing/pricing-on-northflank -
"Please note: all users must add a payment method to start creating resources on Northflank, regardless of plan selection."
https://northflank.com/docs/v1/application/billing/pricing-on-northflank -
"$24M+ Raised in funding ... 80k+ Developers in production ... 130B+ Requests processed"
https://northflank.com/pricing