How to Monitor Your Self-Hosted n8n Instance Using BetterStack Heartbeats

If you're self-hosting n8n, monitoring uptime is critical. While n8n doesn’t have built-in monitoring for server health, you can set up simple and effective uptime tracking using BetterStack and n8n's native scheduling features. In this guide, we'll walk through how to set up a heartbeat monitor and ping it from n8n every minute to ensure your instance is alive and responsive.

⏰ Why Use BetterStack Heartbeats?

BetterStack lets you create heartbeat URLs that expect to receive regular pings. If a ping doesn’t arrive within the expected time frame (e.g., every minute), BetterStack will alert you via email, Slack, or other channels.

This is perfect for monitoring n8n itself—if your workflow stops running, it likely means the instance is down, stuck, or broken.

🤹 Step 1: Create a Heartbeat in BetterStack

1. Log in to your BetterStack account.
2. Go to the "Heartbeats" section and click "New Heartbeat".
3. Give it a name like n8n Heartbeat.
4. Set the expected interval to 1 minute.
5. Choose your alert method (email, Slack, webhook, etc.).
6. Copy the generated heartbeat URL.

⚙️ Step 2: Create a Heartbeat Workflow in n8n

Now we’ll create a simple n8n workflow that pings the BetterStack heartbeat every minute.

Nodes needed:

• Cron (set to run every 1 minute)
• HTTP Request (GET request to the BetterStack URL)

Basic setup:

1. Cron Node
   • Mode: Every minute
2. HTTP Request Node
   • Method: GET
   • URL: Paste your BetterStack heartbeat URL
   • Options: Set ignore response code to true to prevent workflow errors if something goes wrong.

Connect the nodes: Cron → HTTP Request

🚨 Optional: Add Logging or Notifications

To make the workflow more robust, you can:

• Add a Slack or Email node if the ping fails
• Log each successful ping to a database or a file

✅ That’s It!

Deploy the workflow and make sure it runs once a minute. As long as n8n is healthy, BetterStack will receive heartbeats. If your instance goes down, you’ll get notified right away.

This tiny workflow gives you peace of mind and can help catch outages before your users do.