Use case
The per-minute cron Vercel Hobby never shipped.
Vercel Cron is fine for daily builds. It is not built for per-minute edge warming, unlimited jobs, multi-site schedules, or cadence changes without a redeploy. Crontap covers the gap from outside Vercel.
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The problem
Why this is painful without the right tool
- Vercel Cron on Hobby is hourly minimum, and you want every 5 minutes.
- Even on Pro, changing the schedule means redeploying the API route because the cron lives in vercel.json.
- You are running two Vercel projects plus a Cloud Run service plus your own box, and you want one dashboard.
- Vercel Cron invocations count against your function quota, so a per-minute warm-up is also a per-minute hit on the bill.
The fix
How Crontap solves it
Point Crontap at your Vercel function URL (or any URL). Cadence from every minute to monthly, change anytime in the dashboard without a redeploy. Same dashboard for Vercel, Cloud Run, Railway, AWS Lambda Function URLs, or your own boxes.
*/1 * * * *The Vercel Cron limits worth knowing before you wire anything up. Hobby plans are hourly minimum and capped at 5 cron jobs. Even on Pro the schedules live in vercel.json, so changing the cadence (or adding a 6th job) means a redeploy of the project instead of saving a form. Vercel Pro is $20/mo per user, which makes minute-cadence cron a per-seat cost on top of the function quota a cron job already consumes.
One concrete pattern from the dataset: a Vercel-hosted AI SaaS keeping its edge warm every 6 hours in Asia/Hong_Kong. The schedule fires the public site URL on the cadence; the Vercel function quota stays small and the cron lives outside the repo, so a marketing rollout does not need a deploy to retune the warm.
Failure surface is the same as every other Crontap schedule: email / webhook (Slack / Discord / Telegram), with the run's status code, duration, and response body in the alert payload.
For the head-to-head decision frame, pricing math, and a migration playbook, see Crontap vs Vercel Cron.
FAQ
Common questions
- Can I still use Vercel Cron too?
- Yes. Crontap does not interfere with anything in vercel.json. Many teams keep Vercel Cron for the daily build refresh tied to a deploy and add Crontap for everything that needs per-IANA timezone, sub-hour cadence on Hobby, or a cron change without redeploying.
- How do I secure the Vercel function URL?
- Use a bearer token stored in Crontap's Authorization header on the schedule. Verify it in the function. The endpoint stays public-by-DNS; the auth check lives in your handler and Crontap sends the same header on every run.
- Does Crontap work with Vercel edge functions?
- Yes. Any publicly resolvable URL works, edge or serverless. Crontap fires the URL on the cadence you set; what runs at the other end is your Vercel deployment's choice.
- What is the shortest interval Crontap supports?
- Every 1 minute on paid plans. Free tier available for slower cadences. If your loop wants per-minute on Vercel without paying $20/mo per user for Pro, this is the path.
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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/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1
Schedule
"every 5 minutes"
Next
in 23s