JustRun vs Heroku Scheduler

Heroku Scheduler without the Heroku.

Heroku Scheduler is one of the oldest platform cron solutions. It runs dyno commands on a schedule — coarse intervals (10 min, hourly, daily), no failure alerting, no retry policies. JustRun calls HTTP endpoints with AI diagnostics, escalation policies, and 10-second minimum intervals.

11

JustRun wins

vs

0

Heroku Scheduler wins

FeatureJustRunHeroku Scheduler
Minimum Interval5 min (free), 1 min ($3), 10 sec ($49)10 minutes minimum
Alerting on FailureSlack, Discord, Email, Webhook, PagerDutyNot available
AI Failure DiagnosisAI explains failures, in alert notificationsNot available
Escalation PoliciesMulti-phase, AI Wizard, 3-tier inheritanceNot available
Job Chainson_success, on_failure, on_status_code, on_body_containsNot available
Retry PoliciesExponential, linear, fixed backoffNot available
Dead Letter QueueBuilt-in DLQ, Retry/DismissNot available
Platform Lock-inNone — standard HTTPHeroku only
Dyno Spinup CostN/A — HTTP call onlyEach run spins up a dyno
Execution LogsFull history with response timesLimited log retention (24h)
CLInpx @justrun/cliHeroku CLI (general-purpose)

Pricing

JustRun

Free: 10 jobs. Hobby: $3/mo. Maker: $7/mo. Pro: $19/mo. Scale: $49/mo.

Heroku Scheduler

Free addon (but each job run spins a dyno — $7-25/mo for the dyno).

Switching is easy

Expose your Heroku dyno tasks as HTTP endpoints (add a simple route handler). Set the same schedule in JustRun. Disable Heroku Scheduler for those tasks.

The verdict

Heroku Scheduler is a legacy tool that predates modern cron services. JustRun is dramatically better: proper alerting, AI diagnostics, retry policies, and no dyno spinup cost.

Try JustRun Free

No credit card required. 10 free jobs forever.