HTCondor vs Webcron

HTCondor is a free workload management system for compute-intensive jobs. It queues and schedules work, sets priorities, and monitors and manages computing resources across networked clusters, cloud resources, and international grids. Its ClassAd mechanism matches job requests with machine offers using configurable requirements and preferences. If a machine becomes unavailable during a job, HTCondor can restart that job on another machine. It can transfer job data when machines do not share a file system, or route job input and output through the submit machine. Separate installations can collaborate through flocking, and HTCondor-G works with Globus-managed resources. It is self-hosted and supports Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Feature release 25.14.1 adds a metric daemon that exports metrics to Prometheus and Ganglia. HTCSS is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and distributed without warranties or conditions. Contracted support is available; fees vary by support policy.

Webcron is a cloud service for scheduling web-accessible scripts and monitoring servers, websites, and routers. Jobs can run once or on a schedule as often as every minute, with timeouts up to one hour. Users can choose notifications for successful or failed jobs. Monitoring checks whether targets can be reached from more than one location, using HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, or ping at intervals from 1 to 60 minutes. Monitors can compare page content, look for a specified string, and add custom request headers.

The API communicates directly with the Webcron engine, and its documented methods cover cron jobs and monitors. A PHP class is available for API connections and is stated to support PHP 5.0 and later. The maker lists monitoring stations in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Ireland, Brazil, Germany, France, South Korea, and Australia. Webcron has no free plan and offers a 14-day trial; monitoring can be tried free for one week or until credits are used up. Listed per-launch prices include free for a 180-second timeout, €0.01, paid once for 600 seconds, €0.13, paid once for 1800 seconds, and €0.25, paid once for 3600 seconds. Email alerts cost €0.01 and SMS alerts cost €0.15.