SHSelfHostIndex

Crontab UI vs Gocron

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted automation & workflows options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
CR Crontab UI Web interface for editing and managing crontab jobs VS GO Gocron Self-hosted task scheduler with a web management UI
FeatureCrontab UIGocron
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score83 · Excellent22 · At risk
CategoryAutomation & WorkflowsAutomation & Workflows
LicenseMITMIT
LanguageJavaScriptGo
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 3,287★ 6,264
First released20162017
Replacescroncron, Rundeck

What are Crontab UI and Gocron?

Crontab UI

Crontab UI is a web application that makes managing the system crontab safe and easy, offering job editing, logging, backups, and import or export. It removes the risk of hand-editing crontab files.

  • Visual crontab editing
  • Job execution logs
  • Backup and restore
  • Import and export jobs

Read the full Crontab UI guide →

Gocron

Gocron is an open-source, lightweight task scheduling system with a web interface for managing shell and HTTP jobs across hosts. It is self-hosted to schedule, run, and monitor recurring tasks.

  • Web-based job management
  • Shell and HTTP tasks
  • Distributed task nodes
  • Execution logs and alerts

Crontab UI vs Gocron: key differences

Crontab UI is written in JavaScript, while Gocron is built with Go.

Why pick each one

Choose Crontab UI if…

  • Safer than editing crontab
  • Simple interface

Watch out for

  • Single-host scope
  • Basic scheduling only
Crontab UI details

Choose Gocron if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 6.3k GitHub stars
Gocron details

Frequently asked questions

Is Crontab UI or Gocron better?

Neither is universally better. Gocron has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Crontab UI and Gocron free and open-source?

Yes. Crontab UI is licensed under MIT and Gocron under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Crontab UI and Gocron with Docker?

Crontab UI: yes. Gocron: yes.

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