Use case
Hit a Lambda Function URL on any cron, skip the EventBridge IAM.
Lambda Function URLs (launched in 2022) turn Lambdas into plain HTTPS endpoints. Crontap calls them on a cron, with any cadence in any IANA timezone, without an EventBridge rule, an IAM role, or a CloudWatch alarm to wire.
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The problem
Why this is painful without the right tool
- EventBridge Scheduler needs an IAM role per target plus a service permission per route, which is a lot of YAML for what amounts to 'fire this URL every 10 minutes'.
- CloudWatch is the only built-in failure surface; rich alerting to email or webhook is left for you to wire up separately, often through a second Lambda.
- EventBridge minimum cadence is 1 minute, same as Crontap, but the cost surface (EventBridge events plus CloudWatch logs plus the Lambda invocation itself) is split across three services.
- Multi-region orgs end up with several EventBridge consoles and no central view across regions or accounts.
The fix
How Crontap solves it
Deploy your Lambda with a Function URL set to AuthType: NONE and check a bearer header in the handler. Paste the URL plus the Authorization header into Crontap and pick a cron. No EventBridge rule, no IAM binding, no CloudWatch wire-up. Failures alert to email / webhook (Slack / Discord / Telegram).
*/10 * * * *The Function URL surface gives you two auth modes: AWS_IAM (signed requests, mostly useful for internal AWS-to-AWS calls) and NONE (a public HTTPS endpoint, with auth handled inside the function). For Crontap, NONE plus a bearer-header check in the handler is the simplest pairing: no SigV4 signing, no IAM role on Crontap's side, just a header that your function verifies on every invocation.
For a multi-region setup, one Crontap schedule per region per function gives you a clean dashboard: each schedule has its own URL, its own cadence, its own failure alert. Mixing EventBridge for IAM-bound work and Crontap for HTTPS-fronted work is fine; they coexist and do not duplicate triggers unless you point them at the same function.
Cost-wise you pay the Lambda invocation cost regardless. The saving is on the EventBridge events plus the CloudWatch log ingestion that the EventBridge path forces on you. Crontap adds its own per-schedule price, which sits flat across the org rather than scaling per event.
FAQ
Common questions
- Can I still use EventBridge?
- Yes. Mix freely. Keep EventBridge for IAM-bound triggers, Pub/Sub-style fan-outs, or anything that has to stay AWS-native; add Crontap for everything where the trigger is just 'fire this URL on a clock'. They do not conflict and you can move workloads between them as the cost and visibility trade-off shifts.
- Will this be cheaper?
- You save the EventBridge events cost and the per-target IAM glue. You pay the same Lambda invocation cost you would anyway, and you pay Crontap's flat per-schedule price. For a handful of schedules the savings are small; for an org with dozens of cron-driven Lambdas across regions, the math tilts toward Crontap.
- How do I secure the Function URL?
- Set AuthType to NONE, then check a bearer header in the handler. Crontap stores arbitrary headers per schedule and sends them on every run. The endpoint stays public-by-DNS but anyone who hits it without the header gets a 401, which is the same model as every other public API behind an API gateway.
- What's the shortest interval Crontap supports?
- Every 1 minute on paid plans. Free tier available for slower cadences. EventBridge Scheduler also supports minute cadence, so if you need sub-minute you are on the wrong runtime regardless. For minute cadence and slower, both work; the difference is the IAM and dashboard story.
Related guides
Adjacent use cases
Ready to fix it?
Point Crontap at any URL. Pick any cron. Done.
WordPress, Shopify, Railway, Cloud Run, Vercel, HubSpot, Ghost, your own box. If it answers HTTP, Crontap can drive it on a clock you can read, in the timezone that actually matters, and page you when something breaks.
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