Healthchecks.io
Ranked 2 of 4 uptime monitors by recommenders
Dead man's switch that alerts you when scheduled jobs or backups fail to check in, and people say it has saved them repeatedly.
9 people recommended Healthchecks.io in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and none criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 9 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 8 of those comments still count.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- mixed feelings
- 1
- warn against or regret it
- 0
The record
Recommended in 6 of 12 months
In 7 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 7 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 33% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 8 of the 10 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Catches failed backups and jobs
“I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don’t complete”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe” “I use those kind of healthchecks literally for everything, especially for backups - they saved my ass many times over.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI” Open source, self-hostable option
“Healthchecks.io is great and open source, and you should look at it too.”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Cronomonitor.com Is Now Live” “My secret sauce is a healtchecks.io instance that blows up my phone”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Backups Aren't Simple” Dependable for years of use
“As a user for over a decade, just here to submit my appreciation. healthchecks.io is fantastic.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Healthchecks.io Now Uses Self-Hosted Object Storage” “I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI”
Other uptime monitors people recommend
The three most recommended other uptime monitors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime Kuma | 13 | 1 | 2 | 87% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Healthchecks.ioThis page | 9 | 1 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
| Updog | 5 | 1 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Claude status page | 5 | 0 | 4 | 56% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 10 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Healthchecks.io is great and open source, and you should look at it too.”
“I use those kind of healthchecks literally for everything, especially for backups - they saved my ass many times over.”
“I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.”
“My secret sauce is a healtchecks.io instance that blows up my phone”
“As a user for over a decade, just here to submit my appreciation. healthchecks.io is fantastic.”
“you’d seem to be able to 100x the throughput vertically scaling on one machine with a file system and an SSD”
“I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don’t complete”
“can help with "monitoring the monitors”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.