Some hosting providers limit the usage of their Cron Jobs. For example, you can't set cronjobs to run more frequently than every 15 minutes.
In that case, you can try a free, online cronjob service.
What is a cronjob service (web cron)? Basically, they run your cronjobs by visiting your cronjob URL at an interval. For example, to run wp-cron.php every 5 minutes, just set up a cronjob to https://example.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1
Here are the best free cronjob services:
With FastCron, you can create up to 5 cronjobs running every 5 minutes. That's enough for your WordPress blog and some simple PHP websites.
The timeout limit is 15 seconds, and you get to see the last 50 execution results. You'll receive email notifications when your cronjobs fail and succeed again.
You must log in at least once every 90 days to keep your free account active.
cron-job.org is the most generous free cronjob service. You can create unlimited cronjobs and run up to every minute.
The timeout limit is 30 seconds. You'd better keep your script output short, less than 64 KB, or they will mark your cronjobs as failed and disable them after 15 executions.
They are running a lot of cronjobs every day, so there are some random delays ('jitter') from 4 to 40 seconds.
EasyCron offers free cronjobs up to 200 executions per day, with a minimum interval of 20 minutes. It's kinda okay for a low traffic blog.
The timeout limit is only 5 seconds. After that, they will stop waiting for your script to complete. No email notifications when cronjob fails.
They require you to log in and renew your free account once a month.
There are some other webcron services. However, their free plans are not as generous as the 3 above. They are less active over the years. Try them at your own risk:
Here are the comparison table for the top 3 free cronjob services:
| Cron-job.org | FastCron | EasyCron | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of cronjobs | unlimited | 10 | 200 |
| Minimum cron interval | 1 minute | 5 minutes | 20 minutes |
| Max cron history logs | 25 | 50 | 10 |
| Max cron timeout | 30 seconds | 15 seconds | 5 seconds |
| Keep failure logs | no | 3 | no |
| Max response size | 64 KB | 100 MB | 100 MB |
| Max API calls per day | 100 | unlimited | unlimited |
| Change HTTP method and headers | yes | yes | no |
| Track running cronjobs | no | yes | yes |
| Requires monthly login | no | no | yes |
| Email notifications | yes | yes | no |
Not satisfied with a free cronjob service like EasyCron and cron-job.org? FastCron is the best choice for a reliable cronjob service.
Need help? Reach out to support@fastcron.com - we're happy to help.
See why 8,000+ website developers and their teams use FastCron to run their cronjobs 12 million times a day.
The reliable online cronjob service for your websites since 2009.