LastPing vs Healthchecks.io: free cron and CI/CD monitoring

Feature by feature

Only rows we can stand behind. Where Healthchecks.io wins, the table says so.

The CI/CD difference, concretely

Both tools catch a silent cron job. Only one catches a silent pipeline.

Migrating takes one URL change

Both tools use the same mechanism: your job pings a unique URL when it finishes. Switching is not a rewrite.

# before — end of your cron job
curl -fsS https://hc-ping.com/<uuid>

# after — same line, different URL
curl -fsS https://ping.lastping.dev/<id>

Create a check in LastPing, set the same schedule and grace period, and swap the URL. Success/failure signalling works too: append /fail or an exit code to the ping URL. Your first alert destination (the account email) is attached automatically, so there is nothing else to configure.

Replacing hc-ping.com URLs

Every hc-ping.com URL maps to a LastPing ping URL. The check ids differ, so each check gets a new monitor and a new URL.

crontab -l | grep -n 'hc-ping.com'
grep -rn 'hc-ping.com' /etc/crontab /etc/cron.d . 2>/dev/null

hc-ping.com/<uuid>          ping.lastping.dev/<id>          success
hc-ping.com/<uuid>/start    ping.lastping.dev/<id>/start    run started
hc-ping.com/<uuid>/fail     ping.lastping.dev/<id>/fail     failure, body kept
hc-ping.com/<uuid>/<code>   ping.lastping.dev/<id>/<code>   0 success, else fail
hc-ping.com/<uuid>/log      ping.lastping.dev/<id>/log      log line, no state change
?rid=<run id>               ?rid=<run id>                  pairs start and finish

backup.sh && { curl -fsS -m 10 --retry 3 https://hc-ping.com/<uuid>; curl -fsS -m 10 --retry 3 https://ping.lastping.dev/<id>; }

Questions people ask

Front-loaded answers: the most important fact first.

• Is LastPing a free alternative to Healthchecks.io?

  Yes. LastPing is a fully-hosted alternative to Healthchecks.io with no check cap, free for individuals. It monitors cron jobs the same way (your job curls a ping URL when it finishes) and additionally monitors CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) via one signed webhook with zero workflow YAML changes.

• When is Healthchecks.io the better choice?

  If you only monitor cron jobs and want open-source software you can self-host, need team and project sharing, or need its very broad integration list (PagerDuty, Opsgenie, ntfy, Pushover and more), Healthchecks.io is excellent and has a decade of track record. LastPing is hosted-only and single-user today.

• Can I migrate from Healthchecks.io to LastPing?

  Yes, in minutes. Both tools use the same mechanism: your job requests a unique ping URL when it finishes. Migrating is creating a check in LastPing and changing the URL your job curls: no library, agent, or code changes.

• Can Healthchecks.io monitor GitHub Actions workflows?

  Only by adding a curl step to every workflow you want covered, and that step never fires if the runner hangs or GitHub disables the schedule. LastPing instead ingests one signed workflow_run webhook per repository: zero YAML changes, and it catches runs that fail, hang, or never start, with a deep link to the run and failure detail on the incident. Setup guide →

• How do I replace hc-ping.com URLs with LastPing?

  Create a LastPing monitor for each Healthchecks.io check, with the same schedule, time zone and grace, then swap the URL prefix: https://hc-ping.com/<uuid> becomes the monitor's https://ping.lastping.dev/<id>. The /start, /fail, /log and /<exit-code> suffixes and the ?rid= parameter keep their meaning. Slug URLs (hc-ping.com/<ping-key>/<slug>) have no equivalent: each LastPing monitor has its own URL.