Healthchecks.io

Name: Healthchecks.io
Brand: Healthchecks.io

Dead man's switch monitoring that alerts you when scheduled cron jobs and backups fail to run.

softwareMonitoring & Loggingcron-monitoringdead-mans-switchopen-source

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Our Verdict

Best for

Developers who need dead-simple, ping-based alerts when a cron job or backup silently stops running.

Skip if

You need general website/API uptime monitoring rather than scheduled-job-specific checks.

What is Healthchecks.io?

Healthchecks.io is a cron job monitoring service that flips the usual uptime-check model: instead of pinging your server, your scheduled job pings a unique URL Healthchecks.io generates for it, and the service alerts you if that ping doesn't arrive within an expected period and grace time. It's been operating since 2015 and supports cron expressions for defining exactly when a job is expected to run. The service integrates with more than 30 platforms for notifications and incident management, including Slack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, email, SMS, and generic webhooks, plus GitHub Issues and Prometheus. It offers a free tier for monitoring up to 20 cron jobs with no credit card required, along with paid tiers for more checks, and the project is also open source and self-hostable.

SpecificationsAI-estimated

deploymentCloud/SaaS

open source✅ Yes

api available✅ Yes

key integrationsSlack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, webhooks

Key Features of Healthchecks.io

Generates a unique ping URL for each monitored job; the job calls that URL on success, and silence triggers an alert.

Supports cron expressions to precisely define when a job is expected to run, plus configurable grace time.

Live-updating dashboard shows check status and full ping history for each job.

Public status badges let teams surface job health outside the dashboard.

Integrates with 30+ tools including Slack, Discord, Telegram, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, email, SMS, and webhooks.

Open source and self-hostable for teams that want to run it on their own infrastructure.

Use Cases for Healthchecks.io

Monitoring nightly backups

Teams add a ping to backup scripts so they're alerted immediately if a backup silently stops running.

Cron job failure alerts

Developers wrap cron jobs with a ping call to catch missed or failed runs.

Self-hosted monitoring

Organizations with data residency needs run the open-source version on their own servers.

Incident routing for missed jobs

Ops teams route missed-check alerts into PagerDuty or Opsgenie for on-call response.

Pros & Cons of Healthchecks.io

Pros

Free tier covers 20 cron jobs with no credit card required
Simple ping-based model is easy to bolt onto almost any scheduled script
Long track record, operating since 2015
Open source with a self-hosted option for teams that don't want a third-party dependency

Cons

Requires modifying jobs to send a ping, unlike agentless monitoring
Free tier is capped at 20 checks, so larger job counts need a paid plan
Primarily focused on scheduled/cron-style jobs rather than general uptime or APM

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Healthchecks.io free?

Yes, the free tier covers up to 20 cron jobs with no credit card required; paid tiers offer more checks.

Is Healthchecks.io open source?

Yes, it is open source and can be self-hosted.

How does the monitoring work?

Your scheduled job pings a unique URL on success; if the ping doesn't arrive within the expected period and grace time, Healthchecks.io sends an alert.

What integrations are available?

30+ integrations including Slack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, email, SMS, and webhooks.

Pricing Overview

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Freemium

Free

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