Best cron job monitoring tools in 2026
20 checks, no card.
All of these tools work the same basic way: your job sends a ping when it finishes, and the service alerts you when a ping is late or missing. They differ in price model, extras and how much you have to host yourself. Prices were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 16 Oct 2026 and are in US dollars.
Price comparison
| Tool | Free tier | Entry paid plan | How the bill grows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ping Clock (ours) | 20 checks | $9/mo for 100 checks | Flat plans: $29 for 500, $79 for 2,000 |
| Healthchecks.io | 20 jobs (Hobbyist) | $5/mo Supporter, 20 jobs | Flat plans: $20 for 100, $80 for 1,000 |
| Cronitor | 5 monitors | $2 per monitor plus $5 per user, monthly | Per monitor and per user |
| Dead Man's Snitch | 1 snitch | $5/mo for 3 snitches | Plans by snitch count |
| Better Stack | Check its site | Not quoted; pricing spans several products | Bundled with uptime and logs |
| Uptime Kuma | Free, self-hosted | None | Your own server costs |
Who each one suits
Healthchecks.io is open source. Good if you want the option to self-host later or need SMS and phone credits.
Cronitor is the broadest product here, with website checks, status pages and real user monitoring. It suits teams who want one vendor for many kinds of monitoring and accept per-user pricing.
Dead Man's Snitch has done cron monitoring since 2012 and keeps the product simple. Fine for a handful of jobs.
Better Stack makes sense if you already use it for uptime or logs and want heartbeats in the same place.
Uptime Kuma costs nothing in licence fees, but you run the server and keep it up, which is a monitoring problem of its own.
Ping Clock is heartbeats only, with alerts to email, Slack, Teams, Discord or a webhook, and flat plans. It suits teams with many scheduled jobs who want a predictable bill.
How to choose
Count your jobs and the people who need access, then price each option at that size. Per-user pricing adds up quickly for teams of five or more. If you run fewer than 20 jobs, several tools here cost nothing.