Healthchecks is an open source alternative to Cronitor and Dead Man's Snitch. Open-source cron job and scheduled task monitoring. Listens for pings, alerts when a job fails to check in on time. BSD-3-Clause licensed, 10.2k GitHub stars, hosted version available, self-host with Docker, and last released 2026-07-14.
Open-source cron job and scheduled task monitoring. Listens for pings, alerts when a job fails to check in on time.
How to start todayIn the product
Should you switch?
Anyone running cron jobs or scheduled tasks (backups, batch jobs, scripts) who wants an alert when a job fails to check in on time, with the option to self-host on BSD-3-Clause terms.
You want a turnkey, zero-ops service with no SMTP or database to configure: self-hosting requires PostgreSQL/MySQL, outbound SMTP, a reverse proxy for TLS, and always-running sendalerts and sendreports processes.
The Docker image bundles the background workers but does not handle TLS termination: put it behind a reverse proxy or load balancer. Self-hosters must keep sendalerts and sendreports running and restart on crash.
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Community proof
Some quotes here endorse the approach rather than report first-hand use, or report a problem. We label those.
"Not OP, https://healthchecks.io is great for monitoring automated tasks like backup scripts. Also has the option to immediately signal failure and send an alert: https://healthchecks.io/docs/signaling_failures/"
"I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don't complete."
Maintenance health
Can you do it today?
docker pull healthchecks/healthchecksGitHub
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