TL;DR: PagerDuty publishes a Free plan at $0 for up to 5 users and a Professional list commonly shown at $21 per user per month on official incident-management pricing. incident.io publishes a free Basic row, Team pricing, Pro at $25 per user per month for incident response, and on-call as a separate published add-on ($20 per user per month on Pro). Enterprise rows are quote-led. Order follows public $0 / published price first, quote-led last.
Incident management software pages the right responder, runs escalation and on-call schedules, and records the incident timeline and review. In 2026 many products also sell status pages, AI scribes, and on-call as add-on SKUs.
Every entry uses the same fields: published pricing, free plan or trial, core focus, and the main limitation. The order below is not a quality ranking. Public $0 / published price first, quote-led last.
Incident management software compared at a glance
| Provider | Published pricing | On-call packaging | Best for | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PagerDuty | Free $0 up to 5 users. Professional $21/user/mo on official Incident Management pricing. Reliability Platform and Enterprise are packaged / quote. | On-call included in IM seats; AIOps and Advance are add-ons | Teams that want a long-standing IM platform with a public free + Professional list | Visit β |
| incident.io | Basic free. Team published. Pro $25/user/mo for response. On-call +$20/user/mo on Pro (standalone on-call $20/user/mo). Enterprise quote. | On-call is a separate published add-on | Slack/Teams-native response teams that want published response + on-call lines | Visit β |
| FireHydrant | Published self-serve and sales-assist tiers on firehydrant.com/pricing β confirm live Starter vs Advanced dollars the day you buy. | Bundled in higher rows; confirm live page | Teams that want incident process plus service catalog in one product | Visit β |
| Rootly | Primarily quote / demo-led for full incident command | Packaged with the platform quote | Organizations standardizing incident command in Slack | Visit β |
| Atlassian Opsgenie / JSM | Opsgenie standalone is being retired; Jira Service Management Cloud publishes list tiers. Confirm Atlassianβs current migration deadline and JSM SKU. | On-call lives inside JSM operations features | Teams already standardized on Jira who will follow Atlassianβs path | Visit β |
PagerDuty and incident.io official pricing pages were reviewed on 30 September 2026. Confirm annual vs monthly seat math and whether on-call is included or an add-on.
Seat definitions differ: a βresponderβ who can be paged is not the same as a stakeholder viewer. Count only people who will be woken up.
How incident management is bought in 2026
The core purchase is still on-call plus escalation. Status pages, AI note-takers, and workflow automation are often extra meters. If you are on Opsgenie, treat migration timing as part of 2026 budget, not a side note.
The 5 providers in detail
1. PagerDuty
Best for: Engineering orgs that want a public Free row and a documented Professional per-user list plus a large integration catalog.
| Published pricing | Free $0 up to 5 users. Professional $21 per user / month on official Incident Management pricing. Enterprise / Reliability Platform: sales-assisted. |
| Free plan / trial | Permanent Free (caps on users, schedules, escalation policies). Paid trial on Professional. |
| Core focus | Alerting, on-call, escalation, incident workflows, status pages as related products |
| Main limitation | AIOps, Advance credits, extra status-page capacity, and stakeholder licenses add cost beyond Professional |
- Official IM pricing states Free $0 up to 5 users and Professional $21 per user / month.
- Free limits include 1 on-call schedule and 1 escalation policy.
- Reliability Platform is a newer packaged SKU β do not assume it uses the Professional list price.
2. incident.io
Best for: Teams that run incidents in Slack or Teams and want published response pricing with on-call as an explicit add-on.
| Published pricing | Pro $25 per user / month for incident response. On-call +$20 per user / month on Pro. Standalone on-call $20 per user / month. Enterprise custom. |
| Free plan / trial | Basic / free tier for small use; paid plans on the public page |
| Core focus | Incident response, post-incident, insights, optional on-call |
| Main limitation | All-in cost is response + on-call if you need paging; do not budget the $25 row alone |
- Official pricing page lists Pro at $25 per user / month and on-call at +$20 per user / month.
- Team plan exists below Pro; confirm current Team dollars and annual rules in admin billing docs.
- Enterprise adds CSM, access control, and a published 99.99% uptime SLA claim.
3. FireHydrant
Best for: Teams that want incident process tied to a service catalog and runbooks, with a public pricing page to re-check.
| Published pricing | Self-serve and higher rows on firehydrant.com/pricing. Re-read the live page; third-party 2026 tables vary. |
| Free plan / trial | Trial / published starter β confirm live |
| Core focus | Incident command, service catalog, retrospectives |
| Main limitation | Advanced automation often sits above the entry row |
- Treat the vendor page as source of truth over aggregator blogs.
- Fits orgs that already think in services, not only chat threads.
- Ask whether status communication is included or a sibling product.
4. Rootly
Best for: Organizations standardizing Slack-native incident command with workflows and will accept a demo-led quote.
| Published pricing | Primarily quote-led |
| Free plan / trial | Demo / trial oriented |
| Core focus | Incident command center, workflows, retrospectives in Slack |
| Main limitation | No durable public list price for the full platform |
- Strong fit when Slack is already the incident room.
- Ask how seats are counted (responders vs everyone in the channel).
- Workflow depth is the product story versus a pager-only tool.
5. Atlassian Opsgenie / Jira Service Management
Best for: Companies already paying for Jira Service Management that will follow Atlassianβs operations roadmap instead of adding a second pager.
| Published pricing | JSM Cloud publishes per-agent list tiers. Standalone Opsgenie is on a vendor-announced wind-down path β confirm the current date on Atlassianβs site. |
| Free plan / trial | JSM has a free cloud row with agent caps; confirm live |
| Core focus | ITSM plus operations / on-call inside the Atlassian suite |
| Main limitation | Migration off standalone Opsgenie is a project, not a toggle |
- Do not buy a multi-year Opsgenie-only contract without reading the retirement notice.
- JSM operations features are the intended landing zone for many Atlassian customers.
- Compare JSM agent math to PagerDuty responder math β they are not the same unit.
Kurums Match: which incident tool fits?
Tiny team, $0 pager β PagerDuty Free (5 users) or incident.io Basic.
Need a published Professional list β PagerDuty Professional at the official $21/user/mo IM row.
Slack-native response plus Γ -la-carte on-call β incident.io Pro + on-call add-on.
Already on Jira β model JSM operations rather than a second stack by default.
Buying tip: Price responders only, then add stakeholder, status-page, and AI SKUs. For incident.io, add the on-call line if people must be paged. For PagerDuty, ask which Reliability Platform items replace versus stack on Professional.
How this comparison was put together
Official PagerDuty and incident.io pricing pages were checked on 30 September 2026. Quote-led tools are labeled as such. No quality ranking badges are applied.
FAQ
Is PagerDuty still $21 per user?
The official Incident Management pricing page lists Professional at $21 per user / month as reviewed on 30 September 2026. Reliability Platform packages are separate. Confirm the live page at purchase time.
Why is incident.io on-call extra?
The vendor sells incident response and on-call as distinct products. Pro response is $25/user/mo; on-call is +$20/user/mo on that page.
Should Opsgenie customers switch in 2026?
Atlassian has published a standalone Opsgenie retirement path into JSM. Treat the vendorβs current deadline as authoritative and budget migration work.
Related: Best Status Page Software 2026 Β· Best Uptime Monitoring Software 2026 Β· Best Observability Software 2026
Last updated: 30 September 2026. Packaging changes; always verify with the vendor before purchase.
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