Monitor Node.js scripts: one fetch call, zero dependencies

The snippets

Create a monitor in the console (its schedule = how often the job should run, plus a grace window), copy the ping URL, and wrap your entry point.

// job.mjs — Node 18+ (built-in fetch, no dependencies)
const PING = "https://ping.lastping.dev/<your-monitor-id>";

async function main() {
  // your job
}

try {
  await main();
  await fetch(PING);
} catch (err) {
  // report the failure; the body is stored with the ping (10,000 bytes max)
  await fetch(`${PING}/fail`, {
    method: "POST",
    body: String(err && err.stack ? err.stack : err).slice(0, 10000),
  });
  process.exitCode = 1;
}

// job.js — CommonJS variant
const PING = "https://ping.lastping.dev/<your-monitor-id>";

async function main() {
  // your job
}

main()
  .then(() => fetch(PING))
  .catch((err) =>
    fetch(`${PING}/fail`, {
      method: "POST",
      body: String(err).slice(0, 10000),
    }).finally(() => {
      process.exitCode = 1;
    })
  );

const PING = "https://ping.lastping.dev/<your-monitor-id>";
const rid = Date.now().toString();

await fetch(`${PING}/start?rid=${rid}`);
try {
  await main();
  await fetch(`${PING}?rid=${rid}`);
} catch (err) {
  await fetch(`${PING}/fail`, {
    method: "POST",
    body: String(err).slice(0, 10000),
  });
  process.exitCode = 1;
}

What this catches

The catch reports what it can; the silence reports the rest.

• ✓A thrown error: the /fail ping opens an incident immediately, with the stack trace stored on the ping.
• ✓A crash your code never sees: OOM kill, unhandled hard crash, kill -9. No success ping arrives; the grace window raises the alert.
• ✓The job never ran: missing cron entry, broken deploy, dead host. Absence → incident. This also covers in-process schedulers like node-cron: if the whole process dies, the scheduler dies with it, and only an external monitor notices.
• ✓A hung run: with the /start ping armed, a job stuck on a dead connection opens an incident inside the grace window.
• ✓Recovery: the next successful run closes the incident and sends a recovery notice automatically.

Questions people ask

Front-loaded answers: the most important fact first.

• How do I monitor a Node.js cron job?

  Wrap the entry point: on success, fetch the monitor URL https://ping.lastping.dev/<your-monitor-id>; on error, POST the error text to the /fail endpoint and set process.exitCode = 1. If the script fails, hangs, or never starts, LastPing alerts you by email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, ntfy, Pushover, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat or webhook.

• Do I need an npm package to do this?

  No. Node 18 and later ship fetch built in, so the integration is zero-dependency. Any HTTP client works: the ping accepts GET, HEAD, or POST.

• What if the process crashes before it can ping?

  A crashed or OOM-killed process sends no ping, and that missing ping is itself the alert. LastPing expects a signal on your schedule plus a grace window; silence opens an incident, so the failure path requires no working code.

• Does this work with node-cron or BullMQ-style schedulers?

  Yes. Wrap the scheduled task body in the same try/catch pattern. The external monitor also covers the failure the in-process scheduler can't see: the whole Node process dying and taking the scheduler with it.

• Is Node.js job monitoring free?

  Yes. LastPing is free for individuals with no monitor cap. See how it compares to Healthchecks.io and Cronitor.