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Northflank Cron Jobs

Schedulers 6.2/10 Jun 16, 2026

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.

Category Schedulers Kind Container cron job Caveats Free tier is intended for hobby/testing rather than production, and resource sizes are modest. Card required No Eligibility anyone

Free value score

6.2 / 10
Show the math
Overall 6.2/10
value = 6.2/100
weighted_components_v1
Run value 5.6/10
value = 0.2 $/mo
fixed_log_v1
Reliability 5.7/10
value = 5.7/100
policy_score_v1
Workflow fit 8.3/10
value = 8.3/100
policy_score_v1

Key metrics

43.2K/mo Run quota Uses stated run/message/execution quota when present; otherwise a conservative floor.
60.0/hr Granularity/reliability Derived from minimum interval with conservative reliability adjustment.
4 Workflow/runtime cron, history, logs, timeout
2 jobs Cron jobs
1 min Min interval
n/a Executions
30 logs Run history
User-set Job timeout no platform cap

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

containers cron jobs paas database

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