Of the seven PagerDuty alternatives pages we read, most are written by vendors who rank themselves first, and none quote PagerDuty's own pricing page. This one does. Every figure below comes from the vendor's pricing page, read on 28 October 2026. These are list prices with no discounts, and the ranking is our judgment for a team of 10-50 engineers setting up its first formal on-call. If you're on Opsgenie, you also have a deadline. Paging tools are one of many stack decisions; the rest are in Hire developers by tech stack: rates, vetting and interview guides.
PagerDuty alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Billing unit | Published price | Free option | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| incident.io | Per user per month; on-call is an add-on (add-on billing basis unstated) | Team $15 annual or $19 monthly, plus $10 on-call; Pro $25 plus $20 on-call; on-call only $20 | Basic plan: Free | Incident response plus on-call |
| Rootly | Per user per month, products add together | Incident Response $20; On-Call $20; both $40 | None shown; trial typically two weeks; startup program | Teams that want response and paging from one vendor |
| All Quiet | Per user per month, billed monthly | Standard $4.99; Pro $9.99; Enterprise on request | 14-day trial, no permanent free tier | Small teams on a tight per-seat budget |
| Grafana Cloud IRM | Per active IRM user, plus $19/month platform fee | Pro "$20/ active IRM user"; Enterprise minimum commit $25,000/year | Free: 3 active IRM users, community support | Teams already on Grafana |
| Jira Service Management | Opsgenie's named successor | See Atlassian's pricing page | See Atlassian's pricing page | Opsgenie customers migrating before April 5, 2027 |
Best for is our judgment; prices are from each vendor's pricing page in October 2026.
incident.io is first because its on-call is priced per user like the others but sits next to incident response in one product, and it has a free Basic plan. That's judgment, not a benchmark. Rootly is second for the same bundling reason at a higher seat price. All Quiet is third because $4.99 is the lowest paid seat price among the tools priced here, and its page lists "On-call Schedules & Escalation Policies" on Standard, Pro and Enterprise. PagerDuty isn't a row because it's the baseline.
All Quiet's page has a data region toggle (USA or EU, Frankfurt) and quotes in USD. incident.io shows a monthly and annual price for Team only. On the pages we read, PagerDuty and Rootly show no currency or region toggle.
What PagerDuty charges
PagerDuty's pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 for up to 5 users, with 1 on-call schedule and 1 escalation policy. Its feature table footnote caps notifications at 100 SMS and phone per month.
Professional is $25 per user per month billed monthly, or $21 per user per month billed annually, which the page labels 16% off and "Save $48/user annually." Professional is the only plan on the page with a monthly option.
The Reliability Platform plans are yearly platform fees: Starter $2,800, Essential $12,000, Plus $48,000, and Ultimate on custom pricing.
PagerDuty's pricing page lists Free and Professional only today; some competitor pages quote other tiers, which we haven't verified.
Is Opsgenie being discontinued?
Yes. Atlassian's announcement, "Evolution of IT operations," sets two dates. From 4 June 2025, "you'll no longer be able to purchase or sign up for Opsgenie," for direct sales and for partners and resellers. Existing customers can keep renewing until shutdown. On 5 April 2027, Opsgenie access is shut off, and data that hasn't been migrated is deleted that day.
Atlassian's named path is Jira Service Management, which it says keeps your alert and on-call workflows in place. That's why it's in the table. We didn't read a JSM pricing page, so we give no price and no comparison.
If you're on Opsgenie today, the real question is whether you want to move once to JSM or once to something else. Moving twice costs more.
What 5, 15 and 40 on-call engineers cost on each list price
This is an illustration built only from the unit prices quoted above. It leaves out discounts, add-ons and tax, and totals are monthly. Your quote will differ.
PagerDuty Professional on annual billing: 5 x $21 = $105; 15 x $21 = $315; 40 x $21 = $840. On monthly billing: 5 x $25 = $125; 15 x $25 = $375; 40 x $25 = $1,000.
incident.io Team with on-call, annual: $15 + $10 = $25 per user, so 5 x $25 = $125; 15 x $25 = $375; 40 x $25 = $1,000. Team on monthly billing: $19 + $10 = $29, so 5 x $29 = $145; 15 x $29 = $435; 40 x $29 = $1,160. The page shows annual and monthly prices for Team only, and on the pages we read the billing basis of the on-call add-on isn't stated.
Rootly with Incident Response and On-Call: $20 + $20 = $40 per user, so 5 x $40 = $200; 15 x $40 = $600; 40 x $40 = $1,600. On-Call alone: 5 x $20 = $100; 15 x $20 = $300; 40 x $20 = $800. Rootly's page shows no annual and monthly toggle.
All Quiet Standard on monthly billing: 5 x $4.99 = $24.95; 15 x $4.99 = $74.85; 40 x $4.99 = $199.60. Pro at $9.99: 5 x $9.99 = $49.95; 15 x $9.99 = $149.85; 40 x $9.99 = $399.60. The price is per user per month, and we make no claim about feature parity with the others beyond on-call being listed on each plan.
We show no Grafana bill. Its page quotes "$20/ active IRM user" on Pro and a "Platform fee of $19 per month" that includes a 3-user allowance and "8x5 email support." How the allowance nets against the $20 isn't stated on the page text we read.
At 40 seats, PagerDuty annual ($840) and incident.io Team annual with on-call ($1,000) differ by $160 a month. The cheapest seat price isn't the cheapest tool once incident response, status pages and SMS are added, and we haven't compared add-ons.
Is there a free alternative to PagerDuty?
Yes, for small teams. PagerDuty's own Free plan covers 5 users. incident.io's Basic plan is free and includes one on-call schedule, one custom field, one workflow, two integrations and one public status page. Grafana's free IRM tier is limited to 3 active IRM users per month, with community support and no credit card.
Rootly shows no free plan. Its page mentions a typical two-week trial and a startup program: up to 50% off for companies with fewer than 100 employees, under $50m raised and under 5 years old, and pay-what-you-can under 25 employees. All Quiet offers a 14-day trial and no permanent free tier.
Open source options such as Grafana's self-hosted tooling come up in searches, but we didn't source them for this article. The catch with self-hosting is that someone is on call for the tool that pages people. If that's your plan, read setting up an on-call rotation for a nearshore team first.
Which PagerDuty alternative fits which team?
This table is our judgment, built from the prices above.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want response and paging from one product | incident.io | Free Basic plan, Team on-call at $25 per user annual (add-on billing basis unstated) |
| You want one vendor for response, paging and status pages | Rootly | Status Pages included with Incident Response; $40 for both |
| Seat price is the constraint | All Quiet | $4.99 per user per month, with on-call listed on every plan |
| You already run Grafana | Grafana Cloud IRM | Free for 3 active users, one platform fee |
| You're on Opsgenie | Jira Service Management | Atlassian's named migration path |
| Your rotation is 5 people and you're happy | Stay on PagerDuty | Free covers 5 users; Professional is $105 a month annual at 5 seats |
Staying is a legitimate answer. In our judgment, at 5 seats the gap between PagerDuty annual ($105) and the priciest of the bills shown, Rootly's bundle ($200), is $95 a month, so migration effort matters more than the seat price.
The same per-unit logic applies to your monitoring stack, covered in Datadog alternatives and their pricing units.
What this means for your incident-tooling decision
Decide in this order. If you're on Opsgenie, your deadline is 5 April 2027, so choose the destination first and schedule the migration around your release calendar, not Atlassian's.
Next, multiply your actual on-call headcount by the per-user prices above. Count everyone in the rotation, not only the team leads. If the totals are within a few hundred dollars a month, price shouldn't decide it. Pick on workflow fit and run a trial with one real week of pages.
Third, price the people. A new tool needs an owner for schedules, escalation policies and alert routing, and that owner is an engineer's time. In our judgment, that cost exceeds the difference between any two tools in the table at 15 seats.
Once the new tool is paging the right person, the work moves to what happens afterwards. See running an incident postmortem on a blended team.
Hiring DevOps engineers for an on-call rotation
If nobody on your team wants to own the migration or the rotation, bring in someone who has run one. HighCircl sends a vetted shortlist of 3-5 engineers in 72 hours, at €45-105/hr ($50-115/hr) with a 20% capped margin. Vetting has four stages run by senior engineers, and about 1 in 10 applicants passes. There's no subscription or recruitment fee. Ask for DevOps engineers through HighCircl.
FAQ
How much does PagerDuty cost?
PagerDuty's pricing page lists Free at $0 for 5 users, and Professional at $25 per user per month billed monthly or $21 billed annually. Reliability Platform plans are yearly platform fees from $2,800 (Starter) to $48,000 (Plus), with Ultimate on custom pricing. Some competitor pages quote other tiers, which we haven't verified.
Is Opsgenie being discontinued?
Yes. Atlassian's announcement says Opsgenie could no longer be purchased from 4 June 2025, that existing customers can keep renewing until shutdown, and that access ends on 5 April 2027. Atlassian points customers to Jira Service Management as the migration path.
Is there a free alternative to PagerDuty?
Yes, for small teams. incident.io's Basic plan is free with one on-call schedule, and Grafana's IRM free tier covers 3 active users. PagerDuty's own Free plan covers 5. In our judgment, a free tier works for a first rotation but a team of 10-50 will hit the limits.
What is the cheapest PagerDuty alternative per user?
On the pages we read, All Quiet has the lowest paid seat price among the tools priced here: $4.99 on Standard, billed monthly, with on-call listed on the plan. Features differ between tools, so compare features before price.
Can contractors be on the on-call rotation?
Nothing on the pricing pages we read restricts who sits on a schedule, and in our judgment each contractor should be counted as a seat when you do the arithmetic above. Whether they should carry the pager is a rotation-design question, not a tooling one.