Cron Job Monitoring - Because Silent Failures Are the Worst Failures

Your backup script ran every night for six months. Then it quietly stopped. Nobody noticed for two weeks. Fivenines alerts you the moment a scheduled task fails, runs late, or takes too long.

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FiveNines cron job monitoring dashboard

Failure Alerts

Get notified instantly when a cron job exits with a non-zero status code. No more hoping your backup script "probably worked."

Late Job Detection

Define expected schedules and get alerted if a job doesn't start when it should. Know before downstream systems start showing stale data.

Duration Monitoring

Track how long each job takes. A backup that normally takes 5 minutes but suddenly takes 45 is a signal that something changed.

What Teams Typically Monitor

Database backups

pg_dump, mysqldump, mongodump scripts

SSL certificate renewal

certbot or acme.sh renewal jobs

Data sync jobs

rsync, rclone, or API-based sync scripts

Log rotation & cleanup

logrotate and custom cleanup scripts

Report generation

Scheduled analytics, billing, or compliance reports

Health checks

Internal scripts that verify service dependencies

Multi-Channel Notifications

Get alerts via email, Slack, Telegram, Discord, Pushover, or webhooks. Route different job alerts to different channels - backup failures to #ops-critical, report generation delays to #data-team.

How It Compares

Approach Setup Failure Alerts Late Detection Duration
Check logs manually None
Healthchecks.io Per-job webhook Limited
Cronitor Per-job webhook
Fivenines Ping URL

How it works: create a task monitor in Fivenines, set the expected schedule (cron expression or interval), and add a single curl call at the end of your script. Fivenines tracks whether pings arrive on time and alerts you if a job is late or missing - with a configurable grace period to avoid false alarms.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Fivenines monitor cron jobs?
You create a task monitor in the dashboard and get a unique ping URL. Add a curl call to the end of your cron script to ping that URL on completion. Fivenines tracks whether pings arrive on schedule and alerts you if one is late or missing.
Can I monitor cron jobs on multiple servers?
Yes. Create task monitors for jobs on any server. Each gets its own ping URL. You see all monitored jobs across all servers in one place.
What counts as a "cron job monitor" in the pricing?
Each individual cron job you choose to track counts as one monitor. The free tier includes 5 cron job monitors across your servers.
Does it work with systemd timers?
Fivenines monitors scheduled tasks managed by cron. Systemd timer support is on the roadmap.
Can I set different alert rules for different jobs?
Yes. Each monitored job can have its own alert thresholds for failure, lateness, and duration.

Related Features

Server Alerts

Set custom thresholds and get notified via email, Slack, Telegram, and more.

Docker Monitoring

Per-container metrics for CPU, memory, network, and disk alongside your cron job tracking.

Custom Dashboards

Visualize cron job health alongside server metrics in custom dashboards.

Proxmox Monitoring

Monitor Proxmox VMs and track backup jobs on your hypervisor nodes.

See how Fivenines compares: vs HetrixTools

Stop guessing whether your cron jobs ran

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Free tier includes 5 servers - no credit card required

Learn more: What is a cron job in Linux · Cron Expression Generator