head to head · open source
apscheduler vs croner
apscheduler has 7,678 GitHub stars, 815 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. croner has 2,614 stars, 80 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. apscheduler leads on adoption by 194% (7,678 vs 2,614 stars). apscheduler is written in Python under MIT; croner is written in TypeScript under MIT. apscheduler has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, croner 3%. croner was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cron, scheduling), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| apscheduler | croner | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.7K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 815 | ⑂ 80 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick apscheduler if
- You weight community size — 7.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick croner if
- You want the croner feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and croner fits your workflow better
About apscheduler
.. image:: :target: :alt: Build Status .. image:: :target: :alt: Code Coverage .. image:: :target: :alt: Documentation .. warning:: The v4.0 series is provided as a pre release and may change in a backwards incompatible fashion without any migration pathway, so do NOT use this release in production! Advanced Python Scheduler (APScheduler) is a task scheduler and task queue system for Python. It can be used solely as a job queuing system if you have no need for task scheduling. It scales both up and down, and is suitable for both trivial, single process use cases as well as large deployments spanning multiple…
read the full apscheduler overview →
About croner
Trigger functions or evaluate cron expressions in JavaScript or TypeScript. No dependencies. All features. Node. Deno. Bun. Browser. Try it live on jsfiddle , and check out the full documentation on croner.56k.guru . Croner Cron for JavaScript and TypeScript Trigger functions in JavaScript using Cron syntax. Evaluate cron expressions and get a list of upcoming run times. Supports seconds and year fields, L (last), W (weekday), (nth occurrence), and + (AND logic). Works in Node.js =18.0 (both require and import), Deno =2.0 and Bun =1.0.0. Works in browsers as standalone, UMD or ES module. Target different time…
read the full croner overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is apscheduler or croner more popular?
apscheduler has 7,678 GitHub stars and croner has 2,614. apscheduler has the larger community by that measure.
Are apscheduler and croner free?
Both are open source. apscheduler is licensed under MIT and croner under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between apscheduler and croner?
apscheduler is written in Python and croner in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, apscheduler or croner?
Choose apscheduler if you want the larger community (7,678 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose croner if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.