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
0
Heroku Scheduler wins
| Feature | JustRun | Heroku Scheduler |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Interval | ✓5 min (free), 1 min ($3), 10 sec ($49) | 10 minutes minimum |
| Alerting on Failure | ✓Slack, Discord, Email, Webhook, PagerDuty | Not available |
| AI Failure Diagnosis | ✓AI explains failures, in alert notifications | Not available |
| Escalation Policies | ✓Multi-phase, AI Wizard, 3-tier inheritance | Not available |
| Job Chains | ✓on_success, on_failure, on_status_code, on_body_contains | Not available |
| Retry Policies | ✓Exponential, linear, fixed backoff | Not available |
| Dead Letter Queue | ✓Built-in DLQ, Retry/Dismiss | Not available |
| Platform Lock-in | ✓None — standard HTTP | Heroku only |
| Dyno Spinup Cost | ✓N/A — HTTP call only | Each run spins up a dyno |
| Execution Logs | ✓Full history with response times | Limited log retention (24h) |
| CLI | ✓npx @justrun/cli | Heroku CLI (general-purpose) |
Pricing
Based on publicly-listed competitor pricing at time of writing. Check the vendor's website for current 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.
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