head to head · open source
salt vs croner
salt has 15,661 GitHub stars, 5,610 forks, 1,885 open issues and last shipped yesterday. croner has 2,592 stars, 68 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. salt leads on adoption by 504% (15,661 vs 2,592 stars). salt is written in Python under Apache-2.0; croner is written in TypeScript under MIT. salt has attracted 36% as many forks as stars, croner 3%. salt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| salt | croner | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 68 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick salt if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 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 salt
Salt is a Python based, event driven automation framework that deploys, configures and manages complex IT systems at scale, built for system administrators, platform and infrastructure engineers, and DevOps teams responsible for keeping many servers, virtual machines, containers, databases, web servers and network devices in a consistent desired state.
About croner
Croner is a JavaScript and TypeScript library for working with cron expressions. It lets developers trigger functions on a schedule or evaluate cron patterns to find upcoming run times, match dates, and calculate intervals. The project lives in the JavaScript runtime ecosystem and is designed for Node.js, Deno, Bun, and browser environments.
read the full croner overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is salt or croner more popular?
salt has 15,661 GitHub stars and croner has 2,592. salt has the larger community by that measure.
Are salt and croner free?
Both are open source. salt is licensed under Apache-2.0 and croner under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between salt and croner?
salt 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, salt or croner?
Choose salt if you want the larger community (15,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose croner if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.