Both solve the same problem: alerting you when cron jobs don't run on time. The difference comes down to pricing structure and priorities.
$5/month flat. Unlimited checks. Modern UI. Focused product.
Free tier (20 checks). Tiered pricing beyond that. Open source. Self-hostable. More integrations.
Annual billing saves 20%
Team members coming soon
The crossover point is right around 20 checks. Below that, Healthchecks.io's free tier makes more sense. Above that, CronSignal's flat pricing becomes the better deal.
Healthchecks.io has more features today. They've had 10 years to build them. CronSignal is newer and focused on core functionality first.
We believe in being honest. Here's when you should choose them:
Here's when we think you should choose us:
Let's address this directly: Healthchecks.io is primarily run by one person, Pēteris Caune. He's been running it reliably since 2015 — nearly a decade of solid uptime.
Some teams worry about the "bus factor" — what happens if the sole maintainer is unavailable? Pēteris has acknowledged this concern publicly and mentioned plans to expand the team when financially viable.
Our take: Pēteris has earned a strong reputation in the developer community. The service has been stable for years. But if your organization requires multiple maintainers for vendor relationships, that's a legitimate consideration.
We're a small team too, but we're structured as a company building around cron monitoring specifically.
We went through reviews on Capterra, G2, and GetApp. Here's what comes up consistently:
The reviews are genuinely positive. Healthchecks.io is a well-regarded service with 15,000+ customers.
Both services work the same way at their core: create a check, get a URL, add curl to your cron job, get alerted if it doesn't ping.
https://hc-ping.com/<uuid>
https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/<check-id>
Healthchecks.io supports start signals to track job duration:
curl -fsS https://hc-ping.com/<uuid>/start
./backup.sh
curl -fsS https://hc-ping.com/<uuid>CronSignal currently supports success and failure signals (start signals coming soon):
# Success ping
./backup.sh && curl -fsS https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/<id>
# With failure reporting
./backup.sh && curl -fsS https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/<id> \
|| curl -fsS https://api.cronsignal.io/ping/<id>/failHealthchecks.io is a solid product with a proven track record. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
If you have under 20 checks, use Healthchecks.io. It's free, it works, and there's no reason to pay for something you can get for nothing.
If you're scaling up, running many checks, or want a predictable flat rate, CronSignal makes more sense. Pay $5/mo and stop thinking about per-monitor costs.
Both products solve the same problem. Pick the one that fits your situation.
If flat pricing and a modern interface appeal to you:
Start monitoring for $5/monthNo credit card required to get started. Set up your first check in under a minute.
Still deciding?
Healthchecks.io is a good product. Check them out → healthchecks.io
Pick the right tool. We'd rather lose a sale than waste your time.
Last updated: December 2025
Pricing verified as of December 2025. Healthchecks.io pricing from healthchecks.io/pricing.