How cron is used
cron is a dependency in 6 of the 6,208 public GitHub projects set up for AI coding agents that we scanned, too few to describe it from them alone. Our scan also samples projects by dependency (Solana 2,661, Ethereum and EVM 1,496, 3D and games 2,818, agent frameworks and SDKs 10,983); counting those, it appears in 22 projects, and what it is used with below comes from all of them. The most used alternative in our scan is Croner (43 projects). Projects that use it most often also use dotenv (77.3%), Axios (40.9%), uuid (36.4%).
cron popularity over time
Gid Score 55: downloads 76, use in agent projects 29, GitHub stars 48, downloads trend 58 (each 0-100). How it is calculated.
Often used with cron
| dotenv | 77.3% of cron projects · 5.0× more than average |
|---|---|
| Axios | 40.9% of cron projects · 5.4× more than average |
| uuid | 36.4% of cron projects · 7.7× more than average |
| Solana Web3.js | 31.8% of cron projects · 85.9× more than average |
| Express | 31.8% of cron projects · 4.7× more than average |
| ts-node | 27.3% of cron projects · 5.7× more than average |
| nodemon | 27.3% of cron projects · 18.0× more than average |
| jsonwebtoken | 27.3% of cron projects · 11.4× more than average |
From all 22 projects in our scan that use cron, including the dependency samples.
How cron is funded
Ways to fund cron
As the maintainers list them in the npm package. Checked Oct 20, 2026.
Install
| Package | npm install cron |
|---|---|
| Main stacks | TypeScript / JavaScript (13), Next.js (7), Rust (2) |
| Example projects | kevinluosl/deepbot, discord-relay-chat/drc, ashugaev/GooseInvestAlertBot, terisuke/engineer-cafe-navigator, Hackbyrd/orbital-express |
Alternatives to cron
Tools that do the same job, so a project picks one or the other. Add-ons and libraries used alongside cron are not listed here; they are in "Often used with".
| Tool | Gid Score | Used in agent projects | Downloads / wk | GitHub stars | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Croner npm JavaScript cron expression parser and task scheduler with no dependencies, for all environments. |
56 | 43 (0.9%) | 6.1M | 2,611 | MIT |
| node-cron npm Job scheduling for Node.js with overlap prevention and distributed coordination. |
56 | 37 (0.8%) | 3M | 3,282 | ISC |
More in Jobs, queues and workflows: APScheduler Celery BullMQ croniter Inngest schedule p-queue Workflow DevKit