What Cronwatch does
Know the moment a cron job, backup or scheduled script stops running: one ping URL, an email when it goes quiet.
Cron jobs fail silently. A backup script that stopped running three weeks ago looks exactly like one that ran last night, until the day you need the backup. Cronwatch turns silence into an alert: your job pings a URL when it finishes, and if the ping does not arrive on schedule, you get an email.
Create a check, choose how often the job runs and how much grace to allow, and add one curl line after your job. Call /start before the job to measure how long it runs, and /fail when it errors to get alerted straight away instead of waiting for the grace period.
The free plan watches 3 checks with email alerts. Pro is $5 a month because Cronwatch is watching around the clock while your laptop is closed: 50 checks, one-minute schedules, Slack, Discord and webhook alerts, and 1,000 pings of history.
Free vs Pro
| Feature | Free $0 · no account | Pro $5/mo · 3 browsers |
|---|---|---|
| 3 checks with their own ping URL | Included | Included |
| Schedules every 5 minutes or slower, with a grace period you choose | Included | Included |
| Email alerts when a job is late or calls /fail, and an "UP again" email when it recovers | Included | Included |
| /start and /fail URLs to measure run time and report failures | Included | Included |
| Copy-paste snippets for crontab, bash, Python, Node, GitHub Actions and PowerShell | Included | Included |
| The last 20 pings per check, live | Included | Included |
| 50 checks | — | Pro |
| Checks every minute | — | Pro |
| Slack, Discord and webhook alerts | — | Pro |
| 1,000 pings of history per check | — | Pro |
Pro is $5/mo, billed monthly. Checkout and the licence key are handled by Dodo Payments (merchant of record). By buying you agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy.
Questions
Is Cronwatch free?
Yes, with no account and no install. The free plan includes: 3 checks with their own ping URL; Schedules every 5 minutes or slower, with a grace period you choose; Email alerts when a job is late or calls /fail, and an "UP again" email when it recovers; /start and /fail URLs to measure run time and report failures; and 2 more. Pro ($5/mo, billed monthly, cancel anytime) adds: 50 checks; Checks every minute; Slack, Discord and webhook alerts; 1,000 pings of history per check.
Does Cronwatch upload my data?
Yes, by design. Each check's name and schedule, the time and type of each ping, the first part of the pinging machine's user agent and its country are stored in Google Firebase in the United States so we can alert you while this tab is closed. Free keeps the last 20 pings per check, Pro 1,000. Your alert email is stored only after you confirm it. Delete a check to remove its history. See the Privacy Policy for retention and deletion.
Do I need to install anything?
No. Open the page and start working. It works on desktop and mobile browsers.
How does the Pro licence work?
Pro is a monthly subscription handled by Dodo Payments (our merchant of record). You receive a licence key by email and paste it under "Have a key?" inside the tool. One key works on up to 3 browsers.
How does cron job monitoring work?
Each check has its own URL. Your job requests that URL when it finishes. Cronwatch knows how often the job should run; if no request arrives within that period plus the grace time, the check goes DOWN and you get an email. The next ping marks it UP again and you get a recovery email.
What happens if the ping itself fails?
Use curl with -m 10 --retry 3 so a slow network never blocks or breaks your job; the snippets do this for you. A missed ping only means you get alerted, never that the job stops.
Can it tell me when a job fails, not just when it is late?
Yes. Request the /fail URL from your error path and the check goes DOWN immediately with an alert. The bash and GitHub Actions snippets show both paths.
Do I need an account?
No. Checks belong to this browser. Add an email address under Alerts and confirm it once to receive alerts.
Is Pro a subscription?
Yes, $5 a month, cancel any time from the Pro panel, because the watchdog runs on our servers every minute. The free plan keeps working without it.
