There are many differences between Cron and Anacron as given below:
Minimum granularity with Cron is in minutes, while it is in days with Anacron.
A Cron job can be scheduled by any normal user, while Anacron can be scheduled only by a superuser (a superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system, the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin, or supervisor).
Cron expects the system to be up and running, while Anacron doesn’t expect this all the time. In the case of Anacron, if a job is scheduled and the system is down at this time, it will execute the job as soon as the system is up and running.
Cron is ideal for servers, while Anacron is ideal for both desktops and laptops.
Cron should be used when we want a job to be executed at a particular hour and minute, while Anacron should be used when the job can be executed at any time.