Cron job monitoring
Cron job monitoring that catches the loud failures first.
Crontap fires your HTTP cron, stores every run, and alerts when the call fails. For silent skips, add a native heartbeat. For public URLs, add built-in uptime in the same dashboard.
At a glance
Failure alerts on every run
Crontap fires your URL and records the status, duration, size, and error summary in the run log. Failed runs are retried automatically with exponential backoff before you get alerted.
Run history per schedule
Search past fires instead of grepping syslog. See which deploy broke the nightly sync without SSH.
Uptime on public URLs
The same account can probe customer-facing endpoints on a 1-minute cadence (Pro). Schedules and monitors share connected Notifications and machine webhook Integrations.
Heartbeats for silent failures
Your job pings a secret URL. If the ping stops or reports /fail, Crontap detects the miss within one minute after the grace period, then sends notifications asynchronously.
See HeartbeatsHow it works
Three signals, one dashboard.
Paste the job URL and cron
Set the five-field expression, IANA timezone, headers, and connected email, Slack, Discord, or Telegram Notifications.
Crontap fires on the clock
External HTTP cron hits your endpoint on schedule. Failed runs are retried automatically with exponential backoff before you get alerted.
Probe public URLs with Uptime
Uptime checks ask whether a customer-facing URL responds. Paid plans can probe every minute and retain 90 days of history.
Listen for jobs with Heartbeats
Your job pings Crontap after it runs. Period plus grace catches a missing run, while /fail reports a known failure without waiting for the deadline.
Why developers pick Crontap
- Scheduler plus monitoring in one product. Cronitor assumes you bring the clock; Healthchecks assumes you bring the job. Crontap includes both for HTTP cron.
- 1-minute Pro cadence floor, per-schedule IANA timezones, stored auth headers for webhooks.
- Free tier: 2 combined schedules, uptime monitors, and heartbeats. Pro starts at $2.99/mo and scales as you grow (not per-monitor pricing).
- Automatic retries with exponential backoff. Healthchecks does not retry failed HTTP calls because it does not fire them.
- Built-in uptime checks live next to schedules when you also need “is this URL up for customers?”
- Native heartbeats cover success, /fail, period plus grace, connected email and chat alerts, generic webhook Integrations, and 90-day event history.
Compare
Crontap vs Cronitor vs Healthchecks.io
No rankings: pick by whether you need the clock, the watcher, or both. Crontap is built for teams that want HTTP scheduling and native heartbeats without a second monitoring bill.
| Cronitor | Healthchecks.io | Crontap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs the cron for you | No (monitor only) | No (heartbeat only) | Yes |
| Alerts when HTTP run fails | Yes | No (ping-based) | Yes |
| Alerts when job never runs (absence) | Yes | Yes | Yes (Heartbeats) |
| Uptime checks | Yes | No | Yes |
| 1-minute cadence on paid | Yes | Yes | Yes (Pro) |
| Paid entry (2026) | 5 monitors free; Business $2/monitor + $5/user | Tiered per check | from $2.99/mo |
Go deeper
FAQ
Cron job monitoring questions
- Is Crontap a replacement for Cronitor or Healthchecks.io?
- Crontap now alerts on absence natively with Heartbeats. Keep an independent external watcher only if you want the alerter and the scheduler in different systems. Cronitor and Healthchecks.io remain stronger fits for deeper start and duration telemetry or self-hosting.
- Does Crontap monitor cron jobs on my Linux server?
- Crontap is external HTTP cron: it calls a URL you expose. For scripts that only run on-box, either wrap them in a small HTTP handler or keep system cron and use Crontap to hit a health endpoint. See our Linux cron guide and troubleshooting post for local setup.
- What's the difference between cron monitoring and uptime monitoring?
- Uptime asks “is this URL responding now?” Schedule monitoring asks “did this HTTP call run and succeed?” Heartbeats ask “did this recurring job check in?” Crontap covers all three in one dashboard.
- How do I get alerted when a cron job stops running entirely?
- Create a Crontap Heartbeat, choose the expected period and grace, and call its secret URL after the job succeeds. Use /fail for a known failure. Crontap detects a missed deadline within one minute after grace, then queues connected Notifications and generic machine webhook Integrations.
- What does the free tier include?
- 2 combined schedules, uptime monitors, and heartbeats. Starter supports one heartbeat at hourly cadence or slower. Paid plans unlock more combined items and a 1-minute heartbeat period.
Ready to fix it?
Point Crontap at any URL. Pick any cron. Done.
WordPress, Shopify, Railway, Cloud Run, Vercel, HubSpot, Ghost, your own box. If it answers HTTP, Crontap can drive it on a clock you can read, in the timezone that actually matters, and page you when something breaks.
Free forever tier ・ No credit card required
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