PagerDuty Alternatives 2026: 5 Free Options
PagerDuty alternatives: ilert, incident.io, Better Stack, Grafana and 2 more. Prices and licenses checked October 25, 2026.
•4 min read•Monitoring & Observability
Verdict:Leave PagerDuty if you pay $21 per user a month mostly for on-call schedules and escalations rather than the enterprise add-ons. The free PagerDuty plan stops at 5 users, one schedule and 100 SMS or phone notifications, and that is exactly the box several competitors let you stay inside for free. ilert mirrors those limits and is the easiest swap for a small team. If your responders spend the day in Slack, incident.io gives a better incident workflow, though its on-call add-on narrows the price gap. Better Stack makes sense when you also want uptime monitors and a status page; the responder license is higher than PagerDuty's, but you may retire another subscription. If you want to own the whole thing, OneUptime is open source and covers schedules, escalation and status pages, and the trade-off is that you operate it. A paging tool that is down during an outage is worse than no tool, so host it away from the systems it watches. Grafana IRM is sensible if Grafana already holds your alerts. Zenduty is the cheapest paid route but caps Starter at five users. Whatever you pick, rebuild escalation policies by hand and run a test page to a real phone before cancelling PagerDuty; schedules and routing rules do not transfer.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Price | Platforms | Best for | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ilert | Free (up to 5 users, 100 SMS/voice per month, 1 schedule, 1 escalation policy); paid from $19 per user/month (Pro, minimum 3 users; yearly plans 20% cheaper) | Web, iOS, Android | Small teams replacing PagerDuty Free | Docs only |
| incident.io | Free (Basic: 1 schedule, 1 workflow, 2 integrations, 1 public status page, single-team on-call); paid from $19 per user/month monthly ($15 annual; on-call adds $10), Team plan | Web, Slack, Microsoft Teams | Teams that live in Slack | Docs only |
| Better Stack | Free (10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page); paid from $29 per responder license/month, billed yearly ($34 monthly) | Web, iOS, Android | Teams wanting monitoring plus paging | Docs only |
| Grafana | Free (10k metric series, 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 3 users, 14-day retention); paid from $19 per month platform fee plus usage (Cloud Pro) | Web, Self-hosted, Grafana Cloud | Existing Grafana Cloud users | Docs only |
| OneUptime | Free (hosted free plan: 1 status page, 100 subscribers; Community Edition self-hosted); paid from $22 per user/month (Growth; billing term not stated on page) | Web, Self-hosted | Teams that want to self-host on-call | Docs only |
| Zenduty | Paid from $6 per user/month, billed yearly (Starter, up to 5 users) | Web | Budget paid on-call for small teams | Docs only |
| xMatters | Free (Free plan: up to 5 users); paid from $15 per user/month (Starter, up to 25 users) | Web browser | Incident Management | Docs only |
| Squadcast (SolarWinds Incident Response) | Paid from $15 per user/month, billed annually (Pro) | Web browser | Incident Management | Docs only |
Independent comparison. Paid placements are labelled separately; editorial links earn no affiliate commissions. Learn more.
Good fit if
- You are a team of five or fewer on PagerDuty's free plan (ilert is the pick)
- Your incidents are run in Slack (incident.io is the pick)
- You want to self-host on-call and status pages (OneUptime is the pick)
- You want uptime monitoring and paging in one bill (Better Stack is the pick)
- You already send alerts from Grafana (Grafana is the pick)
Not ideal if
- You rely on PagerDuty features or integrations that these tools do not replicate
PagerDuty today: Free (up to 5 users, 1 schedule, 1 escalation policy, 100 SMS/phone notifications per month); paid from $21 per user/month, billed annually (Professional; $25 monthly) (PagerDuty pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Why people look for PagerDuty alternatives
PagerDuty Free covers 5 users, one schedule, one escalation policy, 100 free SMS or phone notifications a month and 3 months of history, without SSO, Incident Roles or Live Call Routing. Professional is $21 per user a month billed annually ($25 monthly) and still leaves AIOps, PagerDuty Advance, Runbook Automation and Live Call Routing as add-ons purchased separately. Post-incident reviews need Professional.
ilert
Compared with PagerDuty: Free plan for up to 5 users with 1 schedule, 1 escalation policy and 100 SMS or voice notifications a month, matching PagerDuty's free tier. Paid Pro is $19 per user with a three-user minimum, below PagerDuty's $21 annual.
Price: Free (up to 5 users, 100 SMS/voice per month, 1 schedule, 1 escalation policy); paid from $19 per user/month (Pro, minimum 3 users; yearly plans 20% cheaper) (ilert pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web, iOS, Android. Proprietary SaaS.
Best for: Small teams replacing PagerDuty Free.
Worth knowing: One free plan per company.
incident.io
Compared with PagerDuty: Slack-native incident handling with a free Basic plan. On-call is a separate $10 add-on on Team, so total cost can approach PagerDuty's. You gain a smoother incident workflow in chat, but lose some of PagerDuty's integration depth.
Price: Free (Basic: 1 schedule, 1 workflow, 2 integrations, 1 public status page, single-team on-call); paid from $19 per user/month monthly ($15 annual; on-call adds $10), Team plan (incident.io pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web, Slack, Microsoft Teams. Proprietary SaaS.
Best for: Teams that live in Slack.
Worth knowing: Free plan has no API or webhooks.
Better Stack
Compared with PagerDuty: Uptime monitoring, status pages and on-call in one product, with 10 free monitors. Responder licenses are $29 a month billed yearly, higher than PagerDuty's $21, but you stop paying for a separate monitoring tool.
Price: Free (10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page); paid from $29 per responder license/month, billed yearly ($34 monthly) (Better Stack pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web, iOS, Android. Proprietary SaaS.
Best for: Teams wanting monitoring plus paging.
Worth knowing: Team members who only view are $0; on-call scheduling is tied to responder licenses.
Grafana
Compared with PagerDuty: Grafana Cloud's free tier includes 3 IRM users for on-call and incident response. Best if you already use Grafana dashboards; the on-call tooling is less mature than PagerDuty's and tied to the Grafana ecosystem.
Price: Free (10k metric series, 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 3 users, 14-day retention); paid from $19 per month platform fee plus usage (Cloud Pro) (Grafana pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web, Self-hosted, Grafana Cloud. AGPL-3.0 (open source).
Project activity: 77.6k GitHub stars · latest release v13.3.0 (Oct 27, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026
Best for: Existing Grafana Cloud users.
Worth knowing: Self-hosted Grafana is free; Cloud adds hosted Prometheus, Loki, Tempo and IRM (incident response and on-call) with 3 free IRM users.
OneUptime
Compared with PagerDuty: Apache-2.0 on-call schedules, escalation policies and status pages you can self-host free. You lose PagerDuty's polish and ecosystem, and SMS or calls cost $0.10 each unless you bring your own Twilio.
Price: Free (hosted free plan: 1 status page, 100 subscribers; Community Edition self-hosted); paid from $22 per user/month (Growth; billing term not stated on page) (OneUptime pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web, Self-hosted. Apache-2.0 (ee/ directory under a separate license) (open source).
Project activity: 7.8k GitHub stars · latest release 14.0.94 (Oct 27, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026
Best for: Teams that want to self-host on-call.
Worth knowing: Community Edition includes on-call schedules and escalation policies. SMS and calls are $0.10 each unless you bring your own Twilio.
Zenduty
Compared with PagerDuty: Paid on-call and incident tool starting at $6 per user a month billed yearly, with no free plan. Cheapest paid option here against PagerDuty's $21, but the Starter plan caps at 5 users and 5 integrations per team.
Price: Paid from $6 per user/month, billed yearly (Starter, up to 5 users) (Zenduty pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web. Proprietary SaaS.
Best for: Budget paid on-call for small teams.
Other popular options (paid)
xMatters
Compared with PagerDuty: Free for up to 5 users, the same size as PagerDuty's free plan; paid Starter is listed at $15 per user per month against PagerDuty Professional at $21 billed annually. Advanced has no listed price.
Price: Free (Free plan: up to 5 users); paid from $15 per user/month (Starter, up to 25 users) (xMatters pricing, checked 2026-10-25).
Squadcast (SolarWinds Incident Response)
Compared with PagerDuty: Pro starts at $15 per user per month billed annually and Premium at $24, versus PagerDuty Professional at $21. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial, and Pro includes 100 SMS or voice notifications per user in the US.
Price: Paid from $15 per user/month, billed annually (Pro) (Squadcast (SolarWinds Incident Response) pricing, checked 2026-10-25).
Which one to pick
- You are a team of five or fewer on PagerDuty's free plan: ilert
- Your incidents are run in Slack: incident.io
- You want to self-host on-call and status pages: OneUptime
- You want uptime monitoring and paging in one bill: Better Stack
- You already send alerts from Grafana: Grafana
Limits of this review
Docs-only for ilert, incident.io, Better Stack, Grafana, OneUptime, Zenduty: we did not install or run them, so feature claims come from vendor pages and we did not test import from PagerDuty. Vendor prices and free limits change; confirm on the linked pricing page before you buy or migrate.
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Kevin Fan
Kevin Fan is a SaaS founder. He runs Free Instead Of, which tracks free and open-source alternatives to paid software and checks each price and free-plan limit against the vendor's own pages.
Methodology
Based on official pricing and product pages checked between 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-25: PagerDuty, ilert, incident.io, Better Stack, Grafana, OneUptime, Zenduty, xMatters, Squadcast (SolarWinds Incident Response). Prices, free limits and licenses are the figures shown on those pages on those dates. No tool on this page was installed or run. No accounts were created.