How to add cron jobs to a Next.js app on Vercel (without upgrading to Pro)

#webdev #typescript #nextjs #javascript

If you've built a Next.js app on Vercel and needed a scheduled job — a digest email, a daily cleanup, a sync — you've probably hit the same wall: Vercel's cron jobs are Pro-only, and the free tier limits you to once per day.

Here's how to get reliable cron jobs on any Vercel plan, including free.

The problem with Vercel cron

Vercel added native cron support, but with significant limitations:

Pro plan required — not available on Hobby
Once per day maximum on Hobby even if you upgrade
No execution history — if your job fails silently, you won't know
No retries — one failure and it's gone

For anything serious you need something external.

The approach

Your Next.js app already exposes API routes. A cron service just needs to call one of those routes on a schedule. Your endpoint does the work and returns 2xx — that's the whole contract.

Scheduler → POST https://yourapp.vercel.app/api/jobs/cleanup → 200 OK

No always-on server. No infrastructure to manage.

Setting it up with @tickstem/cron

Install the SDK:

npm install @tickstem/cron

import { CronClient } from "@tickstem/cron"

  const cron = new CronClient(process.env.TICKSTEM_API_KEY)

  await cron.register({
    name: "daily-cleanup",
    schedule: "0 2 * * *",   // every day at 02:00 UTC
    endpoint: "https://yourapp.vercel.app/api/jobs/cleanup",
  })

Your API route just needs to return 2xx:

  // app/api/jobs/cleanup/route.ts
  export async function POST(req: Request) {
    if (req.headers.get("x-tickstem-secret") !== process.env.CRON_SECRET) {
      return new Response("unauthorized", { status: 401 })
    }

    // do your work
    await cleanupOldRecords()

    return new Response("ok")
  }

Set CRON_SECRET to a random string (openssl rand -hex 32) in both your Vercel environment variables and your Tickstem job headers:

  await cron.register({
    name: "daily-cleanup",
    schedule: "0 2 * * *",
    endpoint: "https://yourapp.vercel.app/api/jobs/cleanup",
    headers: { "X-Tickstem-Secret": process.env.CRON_SECRET },
  })