Both Gabe and Healthchecks.io are heartbeat-style cron job monitors. Here's how they compare.
| Gabe | Healthchecks.io | |
|---|---|---|
| Free monitors | 3 | 20 |
| Self-hostable | Yes (1 command) | Yes (Docker + Postgres) |
| Infrastructure | Cloudflare Workers (serverless) | Django + PostgreSQL + Docker |
| Setup complexity | Clone + wrangler deploy | Docker Compose + env config |
| Webhook alerts | Yes | Yes |
| Email alerts | Pro only | Yes |
| Slack/Discord | Yes (via webhook) | Yes (native) |
| Dashboard | API only | Full web UI |
| CLI tool | Yes (npm) | No |
| GitHub Action | Yes | No |
| Paid plan | $4/mo | $20/mo |
| License | MIT | BSD-3 |
Gabe is the better choice when you want the simplest possible setup. No Docker, no database, no web UI to maintain. If you just need "alert me when my cron job stops running" and nothing else, Gabe does that in one line of curl.
Self-hosting Gabe is a single wrangler deploy on Cloudflare's free tier. No server to maintain, no database backups, no Docker updates.
Healthchecks.io is the better choice if you need a full web dashboard, more integrations (PagerDuty, Telegram, SMS), or more than 3 free monitors. It's a mature product with years of development behind it.
Try Gabe free