What is dish?

Dish is a lightweight Go utility that runs one-shot health checks against HTTP, ICMP, and TCP endpoints. It reads endpoint lists from a local JSON file or a remote REST API, with optional caching to reduce API calls on frequent runs. Checks execute concurrently and the tool exits with distinct codes for success or failure, making it cron-friendly. Alerting options include Telegram, Discord, Pushgateway for Prometheus, generic webhooks, and a remote results API. The single binary has no external runtime dependencies and installs via go install, Homebrew, direct download, or Docker. It suits decentralized setups where multiple instances fetch shared configuration.

Should you self-host dish?

dish scores 49/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #25 of 51 in Monitoring & observability. It has 280 GitHub stars.

There was no stable release in the past 12 months, so check the repository's recent activity before you rely on it.

Setup is easy: most people get it running in one sitting. It is MIT-licensed and written mostly in Go.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is GoAccess (75/100, 21 094 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See dish vs GoAccess side by side.

Features

Concurrent endpoint testing
Cron-friendly one-shot execution
Custom authentication headers
Discord alerting
HTTP health checks
ICMP (ping) checksNot supported on Windows
Local caching of remote config
Local JSON file configuration
Pushgateway (Prometheus) integration
Remote configuration via JSON API
Remote results API
TCP port checks
Telegram alerting
Webhook Notifications
Zero runtime dependencies

How to configure dish

-cachefalsea bool, specifies whether to cache the socket list fetched from the remote API source
a bool, specifies whether to cache the socket list fetched from the remote API source
values: true|false
-cacheDir.cachea string, specifies the directory used to cache the socket list fetched from the remote API source
a string, specifies the directory used to cache the socket list fetched from the remote API source
-cacheTTL10an int, time duration (in minutes) for which the cached list of sockets is valid
an int, time duration (in minutes) for which the cached list of sockets is valid
-discordBotTokena string, Discord bot token
a string, Discord bot token
-discordChannelIda string, Discord channel ID
a string, Discord channel ID
-hnamea string, name of a custom additional header to be used when fetching and pushing results to the remote API (used mainly for auth purposes)
a string, name of a custom additional header to be used when fetching and pushing results to the remote API (used mainly for auth purposes)
-hvaluea string, value of the custom additional header to be used when fetching and pushing results to the remote API (used mainly for auth purposes)
a string, value of the custom additional header to be used when fetching and pushing results to the remote API (used mainly for auth purposes)
-machineNotifySuccessfalsea bool, specifies whether successful checks with no failures should be reported to machine channels
a bool, specifies whether successful checks with no failures should be reported to machine channels
values: true|false
-namegeneric-disha string, dish instance name
a string, dish instance name
-targeta string, result update path/URL to pushgateway, plaintext/byte output
a string, result update path/URL to pushgateway, plaintext/byte output
-telegramBotTokena string, Telegram bot private token
a string, Telegram bot private token
-telegramChatIDa string, Telegram chat/channel ID
a string, Telegram chat/channel ID
-textNotifySuccessfalsea bool, specifies whether successful checks with no failures should be reported to text channels
a bool, specifies whether successful checks with no failures should be reported to text channels
values: true|false
-timeout10an int, timeout in seconds for http and tcp calls
an int, timeout in seconds for http and tcp calls
-updateURLa string, API endpoint URL for pushing results
a string, API endpoint URL for pushing results
-verbosefalsea bool, console stdout logging toggle, output is colored unless disabled by NO_COLOR=true environment variable
a bool, console stdout logging toggle, output is colored unless disabled by NO_COLOR=true environment variable
values: true|false
-webhookURLa string, URL of webhook endpoint
a string, URL of webhook endpoint