Cron and scheduled-job monitoring guides
Practical guides for knowing when a scheduled job stops firing — and why. Each one answers a specific failure-symptom question with correct config and a monitoring pattern you can copy today.
GitHub Actions cron not running: how to tell if it actually ran
Why a GitHub Actions scheduled workflow silently stops running, how to confirm whether it actually ran, and how to get alerted the moment it misses.
How to monitor the Laravel scheduler
How to monitor Laravel scheduled tasks so you're alerted when schedule:run stops or a task silently fails, using the scheduler's built-in ping hooks.
How to monitor Celery beat periodic tasks
How to monitor Celery beat so you're alerted when the scheduler stops dispatching or a periodic task silently fails, using task signals to send a heartbeat.
How to monitor a Kubernetes CronJob
How to monitor a Kubernetes CronJob so you're alerted on a missed schedule, a job that never starts, or one that fails, using a heartbeat from the pod.
How to monitor a systemd timer
How to monitor a systemd timer so you're alerted when the timer stops firing or the service unit fails, using a heartbeat from the service and list-timers to confirm.
How to monitor a crontab job
How to monitor a plain crontab job so you're alerted when it fails or stops running, using a success ping and a dead man's switch — plus why cron stays silent.
How to monitor a node-cron scheduled task
How to monitor a node-cron scheduled task. node-cron runs in-process, so it stops the moment the Node process restarts — how to heartbeat it and be alerted.
How to monitor a Vercel Cron job
How to monitor a Vercel Cron job so you're alerted when a scheduled function doesn't run or errors — including the Hobby-plan daily limit and imprecise timing.
How to monitor scheduled jobs in Rails
How to monitor scheduled jobs in Rails, whether you use Solid Queue recurring tasks (Rails 8) or the whenever gem generating crontab entries — with a heartbeat.
How to monitor Linux cron jobs for missed runs
Native cron emails you when a job produces output but stays silent when a job never runs at all. How to add a heartbeat so you're alerted on every missed run.
How to monitor AWS EventBridge Scheduler and CloudWatch scheduled rules
How to monitor AWS EventBridge Scheduler and CloudWatch Event rules so you're alerted when a scheduled invocation drops, errors, or never fires.
How to monitor pg_dump and mysqldump scheduled backups
pg_dump and mysqldump have no built-in scheduling or alerting. How to check their exit codes, capture stderr, and add a heartbeat so a failed or missed backup alerts you.
How to monitor Render cron jobs
Render has built-in failure notifications for cron jobs. How to enable them, understand what they cover, and add a heartbeat for the silent-miss cases they don't catch.
How to monitor Apache Airflow DAG schedules
How to monitor Airflow DAG schedules so you're alerted when the scheduler is unhealthy, a DAG run is late, or a task fails — using the health API and task callbacks.
How to monitor Sidekiq scheduled and cron jobs
How to monitor Sidekiq periodic and cron jobs using the Web UI, queue latency API, and a heartbeat — so you're alerted when a job stops running or a worker goes down.
How to monitor Spring @Scheduled tasks
How to monitor Spring Boot @Scheduled tasks with Actuator's scheduledtasks endpoint and Micrometer observability, and add a heartbeat for missed-run detection.
How to monitor a Django management command run on a schedule
Django has no built-in scheduler. How to monitor a management command driven by cron or a task queue so you're alerted when it fails or stops running.
How to monitor Google Cloud Scheduler jobs
How to monitor Cloud Scheduler job executions using Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring so you're alerted when an invocation fails or a job stops running.
How to monitor Azure Functions timer triggers
How to monitor an Azure Functions timer trigger so you're alerted when an execution is missed, fails, or runs late — using schedule monitoring and Application Insights.
Why a Vercel cron job fails silently and how to detect it
Vercel cron delivery is best-effort and failed invocations are not retried. Why a Vercel cron can silently fail and how to detect it with a heartbeat.
What a heartbeat monitor is and how it works
A heartbeat monitor stays silent while your job checks in and alerts when the check-in stops. How the pattern works and why it catches failures that push alerts miss.
How to detect a cron job that runs longer than its interval
How to detect when a cron job runs longer than its schedule interval, causing overlapping executions — using start and success signals to measure actual run duration.
How to monitor a database backup cron job for missed runs
cron's built-in MAILTO only fires when the backup job produces output — and says nothing when the job never ran. How to add a heartbeat so a missed backup always alerts.
How to alert when a scheduled ETL job is late
How to set up an alert for a scheduled ETL pipeline that is running late or missed entirely, using heartbeat monitoring and start/success signals for duration tracking.
How to monitor a Windows Task Scheduler task
How to monitor a Windows Task Scheduler task so you're alerted when it fails, misses a run, or stops working — using PowerShell and a heartbeat.
Comparing tools? CronShield vs. Healthchecks.io and CronShield vs. Cronitor. Researching failure modes? Download the open cron failure-mode taxonomy (CC BY 4.0).