The monomolecular cracking rates of propane and n-butane over MFI, CHA, FER and TON zeolites were determineds imultaneously with the coverage of active sites at reaction condition using IR operando spectrosco-py.T his allowed direct determination of adsorption ther-modynamics and intrinsic rate parameters. The results show that the zeolite confinement mediates enthalpy-en-tropy trade-offs only at the adsorbed state, leaving the true activation energy insensitive to the zeolite or alkane structure while the activation entropyw as found to increase with the confinement. Hence, relative cracking rates of alkanes within zeolite pores are mostly governed by activation entropy.