AWS Lambdas could be used for this, you can trigger them on a time schedule using an event bridge.
what happens if the processing takes longer than 30s?
Lambdas can run for 15 minutes
Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
11–20 of 336 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#12Github actions FTW! > https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-th...
I remember seeing a couple projects shared before, using this technique to scrape sites with GHA
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#13If you have a GCP, AWS, or Azure account already and know Javascript, you should be able to whip up a serverless cron task real quick. IMO the simplest setup is probably GCP via Firebase (which makes deployment super simple once you install the CLI): https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/schedule-function...
You won't spend much at all, it's fractions of a penny per call and I think there's a free tier.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
what happens if the processing takes longer than 30s?
Lambdas can run for 15 minutes
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#15Just use a 2.5$/month instance on Vultr for your cronjob, and plain old sendmail for your emails (they will go in your spam folder but at least you don't have to waste time setting up emails).
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#16EventBridge + AWS Lambda
It's cheap as in free, thanks to the generous free tier.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#17You can checkout https://cronhub.io (I run it). Behind the scenes, it wraps a lambda function with EventBridge (so you can set schedule) and adds other goodies like notifications/alert (slack/email etc), metrics, notifications if job runs slow etc. Not free but basically you wrap your job in http endpoint and then we take care of the rest.
I think OP doesn't want to keep a machine running permanently. If you do that, adding your own crontab entry would be trivial as well.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#18AWS Lambdas could be used for this, you can trigger them on a time schedule using an event bridge.
Using their Python library called chalice was really easy to make cron style lambdas in Python in my experience. https://github.com/aws/chalice
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#19Github actions FTW! > https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-th... I remember seeing a couple projects shared before, using this technique to scrape sites with GHA
I came to suggest the same thing.
I use their cronjob functionality to ensure my docker images are built daily and therefore in theory secure.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?
#20Cheap vps running urlwatch sending alerts with pushover. Turn on unattended upgrades for the server. The one time pushover fee is well worth it.