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Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?

#33

Post by davnicwil »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #17
codegeek wrote: post #8

You 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.

I suppose with this solution you could also run one of those free tier machines that spins down when not in use, or a lambda function, etc

Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?

#34

Post by theNailz »

ectospheno wrote: post #20

Cheap vps running urlwatch sending alerts with pushover. Turn on unattended upgrades for the server. The one time pushover fee is well worth it.

+1 for urlwatch. I run it on my pc with Docker (restart=unless-stopped), and Discord integration on a personal Discord channel with alerts enabled. Takes two minutes to set up and is online whenever I'm online.

Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?

#35

Post by ElevenLathe »

If this question came up at work, I would recommend a Lambda function that sends email via SES and is triggered periodically by a CloudWatch event. It would be cheap and require basically no admin overhead once set up.

That said, there are probably different forces at play if this is a personal infrastructure question: while cheap is good, if you aren't fluent in AWS it may be a slog to set up. If you're not, easiest thing is probably a real cron job run on a cheap VPS.

Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?

#37

Post by akerl_ »

1f60c wrote: post #26
Tombar wrote: post #12

Github 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

AFAIK, scheduled GitHub workflows stop running after a while. But when that happens, GitHub will send you an email with a big green “Continue running workflow” button.

I use crons to keep my Docker containers fresh, and have never hit this. But the cron commits to the repo, so I wonder if they’re flagging repos with crons but no commits recently?

Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest, easiest way to host a cronjob in 2022?

#40

Post by akerl_ »

Eleison23 wrote: post #28
jrib wrote: post #22

All free: * free-tier vps on GCP or Oracle Cloud * lambda job on AWS I have a cheap VPS I use for other things and just run my cron jobs there.

I don't know about the others, but AWS is not free and it's not cheap. There are ways to set alerts on budget overruns, but there is no foolproof way to limit monthly spending. Eventually you will configure something that goes out of control, or I was able to conceive of a few scenarios where a malicious third party could rack up charges for, e.g. S3 egress costs. Good luck contesting the charges more than once. I sh…

The lambda free tier on AWS is forever, and if you’re kicking it via cloud watch vs an api gateway it shouldn’t be possible for it to overrun.
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