Healthchecks.io
- Free allowance
- Hobbyist plan at USD 0 a month: 20 monitored jobs (checks) per account and 100 log entries per job; the Supporter plan at USD 5 a month has the same limits
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- volume-quota20 checks per account on the Hobbyist plan
- Evidence
- documented17 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-02checked 2026-11-01 (live); stale on 2026-12-02
| Free tier | Hobbyist plan at USD 0 a month: 20 monitored jobs (checks) per account and 100 log entries per job; the Supporter plan at USD 5 a month has the same limits unit objects; metered on object-count; The unit counted is the check, one per monitored job. A check is up while pings arrive within its period plus grace time and goes down, with a notification, when they stop. The Business plan (USD 20 a month, 100 jobs) is offered free of charge to open-source projects and nonprofits on request. |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
Notification credits for SMS, WhatsApp and phone calls are listed on the Business and Business Plus plans only. |
| Binding | volume-quota The 20-check cap is reached before any rate limit by an account that monitors many jobs; the 5-pings-a-minute rule binds only a job that pings in a tight loop. |
| Identity | email The login page offers Create Your Account and states that a magic login link is emailed; payment details are entered under Account Settings, Billing, when a paid plan is chosen. |
| Egress | not applicable: an inbound ping receiver; the ping log of a check is read back through the API, which returns 100 pings for free accounts and 1000 for paid accounts |
| Per-object cap | the first 100 kB of the request body of each received ping is stored; the Ping-Body-Limit response header reports the limit in bytes (100000 bytes) |
| Retention | 100 log entries are kept per job on the Hobbyist plan and the oldest entry is removed when the limit is reached; a job that pings every 5 minutes is covered for about 8 hours |
| Interface | rest Ping endpoints at hc-ping.com take HEAD, GET and POST requests with no key in the URL path beyond the check UUID or slug; a Management API v3 at healthchecks.io/api/v3 takes an X-Api-Key header with a project-specific read-write or read-only key. endpoint: https://healthchecks.io/api/v3/checks/ |
| Tooling | curl or any HTTP client against the ping URLs and the Management API, and the web dashboard. As a last resort the server is open source under the BSD 3-clause license: the user installs and runs it on a rented or free machine. |
| Composes with | Dead man's switch for the scheduled jobs of free hosts: a cron line, a CI schedule or a serverless timer sends one HTTP request to a ping URL, and the check alerts by email or chat when the ping stops arriving. |
| Reliability | Pings above 5 a minute to one check are answered 200 but not recorded; an account inactive for over a year is closed 30 days after an email notice. |
| Notes | The free plan caps the number of jobs, not the number of pings, so a small set of frequently pinging jobs fits easily; the Business plan at USD 20 a month raises the cap to 100 jobs. |
| Evidence note | documented Plan limits, rate limits and the sign-up method are quoted from first-party pages. No account was opened, so whether any later step asks for a phone number is unverified: behind a sign-up. An authenticated API call from a free account would move the record to measured. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 17
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/pricing/ | the Hobbyist plan costs USD 0 a month and monitors 20 jobs with 100 log entries per job |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/pricing/ | the Business plan costs USD 20 a month with 100 jobs, 1000 log entries per job and SMS, WhatsApp and phone call credits |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/ | a check goes down, with a notification, when pings stop arriving within the period plus grace time |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/pricing/ | the USD 5 Supporter plan does not raise the Hobbyist limits |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/pricing/ | log entries beyond the per-job limit displace the oldest ones |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/pricing/ | 100 log entries cover about 8 hours of a job that pings every 5 minutes |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/pricing/ | the Business plan is free for open-source projects and nonprofits |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/api/ | free accounts are limited to 20 checks |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/api/ | the Management API should not be called more than 100 times a minute |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/api/ | the API authenticates with an X-Api-Key header and the keys are project-specific |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/api/ | the ping log returns 100 pings for free accounts and 1000 for paid accounts |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/http_api/ | ping endpoints take HEAD, GET and POST requests and only the first 100 kB of a ping request body is stored |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/http_api/ | a check pinged more than 5 times a minute may have requests dropped |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/accounts/login/ | the account is created from an email address and a magic login link is emailed |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/faq/ | payment details are entered in the billing settings after the account exists |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/privacy/ | an account inactive for more than a year is closed 30 days after a notice |
| 2026-11-01 | healthchecks.io/docs/self_hosted/ | the server software is open source under the BSD 3-clause license |