Errbit vs healthchecks

Errbit and healthchecks solve adjacent but distinct reliability problems: Errbit is a free, self-hosted, open-source error catcher that's API-compatible with…

Best for Errbit: Development teams that want a completely free, self-hosted, MIT-licensed error tracker and are already using (or migrating from) Airbrake, since Errbit is a drop-in API-compatible replacement.
Best for healthchecks: Teams running scheduled or cron-based jobs (backups, batch processes, background workers) who need alerting specifically when a job fails to run or check in, with a genuinely free Hobbyist tier for up to 20 jobs.

At a Glance

 Errbithealthchecks
Primary categoryDevOpsDevOps
RatingNot documentedNot documented
Pricing modelOpen SourceFreemium / Open Source
Starting priceFreeFree
Free planNot documentedYes
Free trialNot documentedNot documented
PlatformsWebWeb
Team collaborationNot documentedNot documented
AI featuresNot documentedNot documented
Public APIYesYes

Key Differences

What Each Tool Monitors

Errbit: Errbit is an error catcher: it collects application exceptions and errors reported via the Airbrake-compatible API.

healthchecks: healthchecks detects silent failures in scheduled and cron jobs — it alerts when a job doesn't check in on time, not when code throws an error.

These are fundamentally different monitoring problems; conflating them could leave a gap where jobs stop running without erroring, or errors go untracked.

Hosting Model

Errbit: Errbit requires self-hosting on your own infrastructure (Ruby/MongoDB stack, or Docker), with no managed cloud option and no official vendor support or SLA.

healthchecks: healthchecks is offered as a hosted service with tiered pricing, so no self-hosting or infrastructure maintenance is required (an open-source self-hosted version is also implied by its tags, though pricing plans describe the hosted offering).

Self-hosting gives full data control but adds operational burden; a hosted service removes that burden at a price.

Pricing

Errbit: Errbit is completely free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid tiers at all.

healthchecks: healthchecks has a free Hobbyist tier (20 jobs, 100 log entries per job) plus paid tiers from $5/month (Supporter) up to $80/month (Business Plus, 1000 jobs with SMS/WhatsApp/phone credits).

Errbit's cost is entirely infrastructure and maintenance time; healthchecks' cost scales with job count and alert channel richness (SMS, WhatsApp, phone calls).

Alert Channel Breadth

Errbit: Errbit's alerting/notification channels are not detailed in its documented feature list beyond being an Airbrake-compatible error collector.

healthchecks: healthchecks supports Telegram, Pushover, Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, PagerDuty, and Google Chat, with SMS, WhatsApp, and phone call alerting available on paid tiers.

Wide alert channel support, including phone calls, matters when a missed cron job needs to wake someone up outside business hours.

Migration Compatibility

Errbit: Errbit is explicitly Airbrake API compliant, so existing Airbrake gem/SDK users can point their client at an Errbit instance with no code changes.

healthchecks: healthchecks does not document compatibility with a specific competing product's API.

API compatibility with an existing paid tool (Airbrake) makes Errbit a low-friction self-hosted replacement rather than a full re-integration.

Feature-by-Feature

Core Monitoring Function

FeatureErrbithealthchecks
Application error/exception trackingAvailableUnavailable
Cron/scheduled job monitoringUnavailableAvailable
Airbrake API compatibilityAvailableUnavailable
Docker deployment supportAvailableNot documented

Alerting

FeatureErrbithealthchecks
Chat integrations (Slack-like tools)Not documentedAvailable
PagerDuty integrationNot documentedAvailable
SMS/WhatsApp/phone call alertsNot documentedLimited

Pricing & Hosting

FeatureErrbithealthchecks
Free tier / free to useAvailableAvailable
Self-hosted optionAvailableNot documented
Paid managed tiersUnavailableAvailable
Official vendor support/SLAUnavailableNot documented

Pricing Compared

Starting price reflects the lowest paid tier, not the full cost for every team size or usage level.

Errbit

Open Source — Free N/A

healthchecks

Hobbyist — Free N/A
Supporter — $5/month Monthly
Business — $20/month ($16/month billed annually) Monthly or annual
Business Plus — $80/month ($64/month billed annually) Monthly or annual

Pros & Cons

Errbit

Pros

  • Free and open source under the MIT License with no seat or usage fees
  • Drop-in replacement for Airbrake thanks to full API compatibility with its notifier libraries
  • Full control over error data since it stays on infrastructure the team manages
  • Familiar Rails and MongoDB stack for teams already operating Ruby applications, plus an official Docker image for easier deployment

Cons

  • Requires ongoing self-hosting and operations effort, including maintaining a Rails application and a MongoDB database
  • Lacks the broader feature set of modern commercial competitors, such as performance monitoring and release tracking
  • Best suited to teams with existing Ruby on Rails and MongoDB operational experience, so the setup can be less approachable for others
  • Community-driven maintenance pace can be slower and less predictable than a vendor-backed roadmap

healthchecks

Pros

  • Generous free tier (20 checks) that is genuinely usable, not just a trial
  • Fully open source with a self-hosting option for teams that need data control
  • Simple, transparent, developer-friendly pricing with no hidden limits
  • Wide range of alert integrations covering most on-call and chat tools
  • Run and maintained by a founder with a long, public track record of reliability

Cons

  • As a one-person company, support responsiveness can vary compared to larger vendors
  • Higher check volumes require paid plans, which can add up for larger fleets of jobs
  • SMS, WhatsApp and phone call alerts are credit-limited even on paid tiers
  • No built-in uptime/website monitoring; it is focused specifically on scheduled job monitoring
  • Self-hosting requires managing your own Django/Python deployment and updates

Use Cases

Choose Errbit: Development teams that want a completely free, self-hosted, MIT-licensed error tracker and are already using (or migrating from) Airbrake, since Errbit is a drop-in API-compatible replacement.
Choose healthchecks: Teams running scheduled or cron-based jobs (backups, batch processes, background workers) who need alerting specifically when a job fails to run or check in, with a genuinely free Hobbyist tier for up to 20 jobs.
Need both: A backend team running scheduled jobs that also write application code could use healthchecks to catch cron jobs that silently stop running, while Errbit catches and logs exceptions thrown by the application code itself — together covering both 'the job didn't run' and 'the job ran but errored' failure modes.

Errbit

  • Self-hosted exception monitoring for Rails applications — Teams running Ruby on Rails services deploy Errbit alongside their applications to capture unhandled exceptions and view grouped error reports in one dashboard, without sending data to a third-party vendor.
  • Replacing a hosted Airbrake subscription — Organizations already using Airbrake-compatible notifier libraries switch their error reporting endpoint to a self-hosted Errbit server to eliminate subscription costs while keeping the same client-side integration.
  • Centralized error collection for polyglot services — Because Errbit accepts notices from any Airbrake-compatible client, teams running services in multiple languages point each one at a shared Errbit instance to consolidate error visibility in a single place.

healthchecks

  • Monitoring cron jobs and backups — A developer sets up a check for each nightly backup or ETL script so they are alerted immediately if a job silently stops running.
  • Monitoring background workers in production — An engineering team pings Healthchecks from queue workers and scheduled application tasks to catch silent failures before customers notice.
  • Compliance-driven self-hosted monitoring — An organization with data residency requirements self-hosts the open-source Healthchecks codebase to monitor internal jobs without sending data to a third party.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Errbit and healthchecks monitor the same thing?

No. Errbit catches application errors and exceptions reported by your code. healthchecks monitors whether scheduled or cron jobs run on time and alerts when they don't check in — a different failure mode entirely.

Is Errbit really free?

Yes, Errbit is completely free and open source under the MIT license with no paid tiers. It does require self-hosting, so infrastructure and maintenance are still a cost.

Does healthchecks have a free plan?

Yes, its Hobbyist plan is free for up to 20 monitored jobs with 100 log entries per job. SMS, WhatsApp, and phone call alerting require a paid tier starting at $20/month (Business).

Can I migrate from Airbrake to Errbit?

Yes, Errbit is Airbrake API compliant, so you can redirect an existing Airbrake gem or SDK to a self-hosted Errbit instance with no code changes.

Which tool is better for on-call escalation?

healthchecks supports SMS, WhatsApp, and phone call alerting on its paid tiers (from $20/month), alongside PagerDuty integration, which suits on-call escalation for missed jobs. Errbit's alert channel options are not documented in its feature list.

Would a team need both Errbit and healthchecks?

Possibly. Since Errbit catches application errors and healthchecks catches jobs that silently fail to run at all, a team running both application code and scheduled jobs could use both to cover different failure modes.

Read the full Errbit review · Read the full healthchecks review