How to Monitor Cron Jobs in Node.js (node-cron & beyond)

Node.js apps schedule work in many ways — an in-process node-cron, a BullMQ repeatable job, Agenda, or a plain OS cron calling a script. All share the same blind spot: when the schedule breaks, nothing tells you. A heartbeat ping closes that gap.

node-cron

Wrap the job body and ping on success and failure:

import cron from 'node-cron';

const BASE = 'https://api.cronguard.dev/v1/ping/<your-uuid>';
const ping = (s = '') => fetch(BASE + s).catch(() => {});

cron.schedule('0 3 * * *', async () => {
  await ping('/start');
  try {
    await runBackup();
    await ping();        // success
  } catch (err) {
    await ping('/fail');
    throw err;
  }
});

Plain cron calling a Node script

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/node /app/backup.js && curl -fsS https://api.cronguard.dev/v1/ping/<your-uuid>

BullMQ repeatable jobs

Ping inside the worker processor, or use the completed and failed queue events to ping centrally:

worker.on('completed', () => fetch('https://api.cronguard.dev/v1/ping/<your-uuid>').catch(() => {}));
worker.on('failed', () => fetch('https://api.cronguard.dev/v1/ping/<your-uuid>/fail').catch(() => {}));

Alerts that wake you up

Send those pings to CronGuard, set the expected interval, and get instant alerts over SMS, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram or email when a Node job misses its window — plus execution-time tracking. Free to start, nothing to install.