go-crond vs Supercronic
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted automation & workflows options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | go-crond | Supercronic |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 5 · At risk | 86 · Excellent |
| Category | Automation & Workflows | Automation & Workflows |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 143 | ★ 2,651 |
| First released | 2017 | 2017 |
| Replaces | cron | cron |
What are go-crond and Supercronic?
go-crond
go-crond is a small cron daemon written in Go that runs scheduled jobs from crontab-style files, designed for use inside containers and minimal environments. It is self-hosted as a single binary.
- Container-friendly cron
- Single static binary
- Crontab-compatible
- Run jobs as users
Supercronic
Supercronic is an open-source cron job runner that is crontab compatible and designed specifically to run inside containers. It is self-hosted to schedule periodic tasks with proper logging and signal handling.
- Crontab compatible
- Container friendly
- Proper logging
- Lightweight single binary
go-crond vs Supercronic: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Supercronic has the considerably larger community, at 2,651 GitHub stars versus 143.
Why pick each one
Choose go-crond if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in Go
Choose Supercronic if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (2.7k GitHub stars)
Frequently asked questions
Is go-crond or Supercronic better?
Neither is universally better. Supercronic has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are go-crond and Supercronic free and open-source?
Yes. go-crond is licensed under MIT and Supercronic under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run go-crond and Supercronic with Docker?
go-crond: yes. Supercronic: yes.