cronguard vs Healthchecks.io vs Cronitor: Which Cron Monitor?

Three cron monitors, three different trade-offs. cronguard is a self-hosted single binary. Healthchecks.io is open source with a hosted tier. Cronitor is pure SaaS with the most integrations. Here's how they compare.

Quick comparison

When to pick cronguard

cronguard fits if you're already running your own infrastructure and want monitoring that doesn't depend on a third-party service being up. It's a single Go binary with no dependencies — no database, no runtime, no config files. Download, run, done.

./cronguard
# Open http://localhost:8099, create a check, add ping to your cron job

The trade-off is clear: fewer integrations and no team features. cronguard does one thing — dead man's switch cron monitoring — and does it with zero operational overhead.

Best for: self-hosters and homelab operators running 10-50 cron jobs on a VPS or home server. You want to know when something stops, you don't want to pay for it, and you don't want another SaaS account.

→ github.com/narrowcastdev/cronguard

When to pick Healthchecks.io

Healthchecks.io is the middle ground. Open source, self-hostable, but also available as a managed service. The hosted free tier gives you 20 checks — enough for a small operation without running anything yourself.

Self-hosting Healthchecks.io requires Python, Postgres, and Redis. It's a Django app, so the operational overhead is meaningful compared to a single binary. But the payoff is a polished web UI, dozens of integrations, and an active community.

The hosted plans start at $20/month for 100 checks with team features, audit logs, and badge endpoints.

Best for: teams that want a proven open-source tool with the option to self-host later, or individuals who need more than 20 checks but want to stay under $25/month.

When to pick Cronitor

Cronitor is pure SaaS — no self-hosted option. What you get in exchange is the broadest integration set, a CLI for managing monitors as code, and features like auto-discovery of cron jobs from your crontab.

# Cronitor can wrap existing cron jobs automatically
cronitor discover

The free tier covers 5 monitors. Paid plans start at $24/month. If you're managing cron jobs across multiple servers and want a single dashboard with team access, Cronitor has the most mature tooling.

Best for: teams with budget managing cron jobs across many servers who want one dashboard, auto-discovery, and don't mind vendor lock-in.

The actual decision

Most of this comes down to two questions:

Do you want to run your own monitoring? Yes → cronguard (simplest) or Healthchecks.io (most features). No → Healthchecks.io hosted or Cronitor.

How many cron jobs? Under 20: Healthchecks.io free tier handles it. Under 50 on a single server: cronguard is free forever. Across multiple servers with teams: Cronitor or Healthchecks.io paid.

The dead man's switch pattern works identically across all three. The ping URL format is nearly interchangeable. Start with whichever has the lowest friction for your setup — migration between them is a find-and-replace of the ping URL.

For the full setup guide covering all three approaches, see How to Monitor Cron Jobs: The Complete Guide.