Cronheart vs Healthchecks.io
Both watch your scheduled jobs with the same heartbeat (dead man's switch) model — a job that stops pinging gets you paged. They differ on pricing, framework integration, and how you host them. Here's an honest side-by-side so you can pick the right one.
Healthchecks.io also offers a $5/mo Supporter tier, but it keeps the same 20 checks as the free plan. Figures verified against healthchecks.io in June 2026 — check their pricing page for the latest.
Where Cronheart pulls ahead
- A framework SDK, not just curl.
cron-monitor/php-sdkships a first-class Symfony Scheduler and Laravel bridge; Healthchecks.io is language-agnostic and leaves the wiring to you. - More monitors per dollar on paid tiers. $5/mo gets you 50 monitors and $19/mo gets you 200 — where the comparable paid step elsewhere is $20/mo for 100.
- Provision from code. A REST API and CLI create and list monitors and channels, so your infrastructure-as-code owns them.
- Rich alerts out of the box. Colour-coded incidents, captured job output on the page that wakes you, signed webhooks, and public SVG status badges.
When Healthchecks.io is the better fit
- You need to self-host. Healthchecks.io is open source under the BSD license and runs on your own infrastructure. Cronheart is hosted-only for now.
- You need SMS, phone calls, PagerDuty or Opsgenie. Healthchecks.io's 25+ integrations cover paging surfaces Cronheart doesn't yet.
- You want the longest track record. Healthchecks.io is a mature, widely adopted project with years of production use and a large community.
We'd rather you pick the right tool than oversell ours. If the points above are dealbreakers, Healthchecks.io is genuinely excellent.
Frequently asked
Is Cronheart a drop-in replacement for Healthchecks.io?
For the core heartbeat model, yes. Both watch a job by expecting a periodic HTTP ping, so you point your existing curl at a Cronheart monitor URL and you are covered. The start / success / fail lifecycle and cron schedules map across directly.
Can I self-host Cronheart the way I can self-host Healthchecks.io?
Not today. Cronheart is a hosted service; self-hosting is on the roadmap but not released. If running the monitor on your own infrastructure is a hard requirement right now, Healthchecks.io is open source under the BSD license and a solid choice.
How does the pricing compare?
Both are free for 20 monitors with no credit card. Cronheart's first paid tier is $5/mo for 50 monitors; on Healthchecks.io the $5 Supporter tier keeps the same 20 checks as its free plan, and its next tier with more checks is $20/mo for 100.
What does Cronheart add for PHP teams specifically?
First-class scheduler integration. The cron-monitor/php-sdk package wires heartbeats into Symfony Scheduler and the Laravel scheduler via auto-discovery, so you map a scheduled command to a monitor instead of hand-writing curl. Healthchecks.io is language-agnostic and ships no framework SDK.
Which one has more alert integrations?
Healthchecks.io, by a wide margin — it offers 25+ integrations including SMS, phone calls, PagerDuty and Opsgenie. Cronheart covers email, Telegram, Slack, Discord and signed webhooks. If you need SMS or PagerDuty today, that is a point for Healthchecks.io.
More comparisons: vs Cronitor · vs Dead Man's Snitch — or learn how to monitor cron jobs.
Try Cronheart free
20 monitors, no credit card. Point a curl at a monitor URL and you're covered in minutes.