IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › IT operations and endpoint › September 2026 Edition

Incident management and on-call

Asked as “incident management platform”, and as “on-call scheduling and alerting tool”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 51 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
incident.io
Contested
25% of first choices, contested.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessincident.io30%ContestedStanding →Mid-marketincident.io25%ContestedThis pageEnterprisePagerDuty50%Clear leaderStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01incident.io25%0%50accepted challenger
02PagerDuty22%31%59criticized challenger
03Squadcast10%0%25accepted challenger
04Rootly8%0%42accepted challenger
05Hyperping8%0%14accepted challenger
06Opsgenie8%59%46criticized challenger
07Better Stack6%6%17accepted challenger
08xMatters2%36%11criticized challenger
Show the six products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
14ServiceNow0%58%12criticized challenger
13Splunk On-Call0%47%17criticized challenger
12Grafana IRM0%29%14criticized challenger
10Freshservice0%20%15accepted challenger
11FireHydrant0%18%17accepted challenger
09Jira Service Management0%11%28accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
incident.io vs PagerDutyincident.io vs SquadcastPagerDuty vs Squadcast

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01incident.io25%
02PagerDuty22%
03Squadcast10%
04Rootly8%
05Hyperping8%
06Opsgenie8%
07Better Stack6%
08xMatters2%
09Jira Service Management0%
10Freshservice0%
11FireHydrant0%
12Grafana IRM0%
13Splunk On-Call0%
14ServiceNow0%

02What they warned about

Seven of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small, Qwen 3.7 Flash, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Opsgenie
59%
27 of 46 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 21 hard negative
“Verdict: Caution Advised / Plan Migration Immediately ... standalone OpsGenie is facing deprecation, with the full sunsetting scheduled for April 2027” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
PagerDuty
31%
18 of 59 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“One of the most widely used platforms, but has received significant criticism for: **High costs**... **Poor support**” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
Splunk On-Call
47%
8 of 17 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Avoid ... basic tools like VictorOps/Splunk On-Call (now pricier, less innovative)” Grok 4.1 Fast, direct prompt
ServiceNow
58%
7 of 12 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Avoid enterprise-heavy like ServiceNow (too complex/pricey)” Grok 4.1 Fast, direct prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

65 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 757 links across 169 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

rootly.com
vendor site · Rootly42 answers · 58 citations · 11 models
hyperping.com
vendor site · Hyperping36 answers · 42 citations · 10 models
incident.io
vendor site · incident.io35 answers · 96 citations · 10 models
monday.com
25 answers · 25 citations · 10 models
augmentcode.com
vendor site · Augment Code22 answers · 22 citations · 8 models
xurrent.com
vendor site · Xurrent21 answers · 24 citations · 9 models
complyjet.com
vendor site · ComplyJet16 answers · 16 citations · 7 models
expertinsights.com
vendor site · Expert Insights15 answers · 15 citations · 8 models
betterstack.com
vendor site · Better Stack14 answers · 15 citations · 8 models
instatus.com
vendor site · Instatus12 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
worldmetrics.org
11 answers · 19 citations · 5 models
guideflow.com
vendor site · Guideflow11 answers · 13 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

hyperping.com/blog/best-incident-management-tools
28 answers · 10 models
monday.com/blog/service/incident-management-software
25 answers · 10 models
rootly.com/blog/15-best-incident-response-software-platforms-for-modern-eng…
23 answers · 10 models
augmentcode.com/tools/best-incident-management-software
22 answers · 8 models
xurrent.com/blog/top-incident-management-software
17 answers · 8 models
complyjet.com/blog/best-incident-management-software
16 answers · 7 models
expertinsights.com/it-management/the-top-incident-management-software
15 answers · 8 models
betterstack.com/community/comparisons/incident-management-tools
11 answers · 7 models
viewpointanalysis.com/post/incident-management-software-options-2026
10 answers · 10 models
hyperping.com/blog/best-oncall-scheduling-tools
9 answers · 8 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best incident management platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which on-call scheduling and alerting tool would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top incident management platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best incident management platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an incident management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which incident management platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Rootly
Three alternativesFreshservice, Squadcast, Zenduty
Opsgenie, PagerDutyChanged
Three alternativesFireHydrant, Grafana IRM, incident.io
against: xMattersRootly
Three alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutySquadcast
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Jira Service Management, Spike.sh
against: AlertOpsno first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniincident.io
Three alternativesJira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
against: FireHydrantincident.ioHeld
One alternativePagerDuty
against: Jira Service Management, OpsgeniePagerDuty
Three alternativesFireHydrant, Rootly, Splunk On-Call
against: OpsgeniexMatters
Two alternativesJira Service Management / Opsgenie-style incident management, PagerDuty
against: Opsgenieno first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyincident.ioHeld
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Jira Service Management
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyPagerDuty, incident.io
Three alternativesFreshservice, Opsgenie, Rootly
against: ServiceNow ITSMBetter Stack, Xurrent IMR
Three alternativesHyperping, Squadcast, TaskCall
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDutyRootly, incident.io
One alternativePagerDuty
against: FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Opsgenieagainst: FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Perplexity Sonarincident.io
Four alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Zenduty
incident.ioHeld
One alternativeHyperping
no first choice
Five alternativesJira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, ServiceNow, incident.io
against: OpsgenieBetter Stack
Three alternativesHyperping, Squadcast, incident.io
against: PagerDutyno first choiceagainst: Freshservice, Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, ServiceNow, SolarWinds Service Desk, SysAid
Grok 4.1 FastPagerDuty
Four alternativesRootly, Squadcast, Zenduty, incident.io
against: ServiceNow, Splunk On-CallPagerDutyHeld
Two alternativesSquadcast, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, Splunk On-CallPagerDuty
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Rootly, ServiceNow, incident.io
incident.io
Four alternativesFireHydrant, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Squadcast
PagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesOpsgenie, Rootly
against: ServiceNowagainst: Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Mistral SmallPagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, Zenduty
HyperpingChanged
Three alternativesRootly, Squadcast, incident.io
PagerDuty, incident.io
Three alternativesBigPanda, FireHydrant, Rootly
Hyperping, Squadcast
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Freshservice, OnPage, Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesFireHydrant, Rootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyincident.ioHeld
Four alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
against: Opsgenieno first choice
Seven alternativesFireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, ServiceNow, incident.io
against: Freshservice, Opsgenie, SolarWinds, monday serviceSquadcast
Four alternativesGrafana IRM, Hyperping, Spike.sh, incident.io
against: Better Stack, PagerDutyno first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, PagerDutyagainst: BMC Helix ITSM, BMC Remedy, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldno first choiceRootlyno first choicenothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashPagerDuty, Zenduty
Four alternativesFreshservice, Hyperping, Opsgenie, incident.io
Opsgenie, PagerDutyChanged
One alternativeSquadcast
against: Splunk On-CallPagerDuty
Three alternativesRootly, Zenduty, incident.io
Squadcast
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Uptime Kuma, incident.io
Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Two alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management
against: BMC Helix ITSM, ServiceNowagainst: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow
Kimi K2PagerDuty
Four alternativesFreshservice, Rootly, Zenduty, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, ServiceNowPagerDutyHeld
Two alternativesOpsgenie, Splunk On-Call
PagerDuty
Seven alternativesBigPanda, FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, Squadcast, incident.io
against: OpsgenieOneUptime, Spike.sh, Squadcast
Five alternativesAlertOps, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, Rootly, TheHive
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenieagainst: Datadog On-Call, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Spiceworks, Splunk On-Call
GLM 4.7 FlashXZenduty
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Opsgenie, Rootly, incident.io
against: PagerDutyRootlyChanged
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Hyperping, Opsgenie, incident.io
against: PagerDutyno first choiceOpsgenie
Seven alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, OneUptime, PagerDuty, Squadcast, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: BMC Remedy, Opsgenie, ServiceNow ITSM
MiniMax M2.5PagerDuty
Four alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management, Rootly, incident.io
Hyperping, incident.ioChanged
One alternativeRootly
against: PagerDutyPagerDuty
Five alternativesOpsgenie, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Better Stack, Hyperping, Uptime Kuma
Two alternativesFreshservice, Squadcast
against: PagerDutyno first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:30yes99 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:12yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:19yes923 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:51yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:55yes2213 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:07yes56 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:46yes1823 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:12yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:19yes525 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:29yes922 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:27yes1227 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:06yes1345 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:21no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:03yes35 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:52yes1124 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:58yes204 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 14:08yes4017 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:20yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:17yes1719 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:31yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:42no041 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:38yes1017 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:44yes9105 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:11yes932 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:38yes98 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:18yes610 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:37yes1022 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:40yes2015 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:50yes2115 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:37yes1111 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:28yes1318 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:03yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:51yes551 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:30yes1024 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:39yes5112 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:25yes528 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:26yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:28yes34 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:35yes1618 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:12yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:27yes4319 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:17yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 13:12yes1733 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:10yes54 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:39yes1045 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:24yes1027 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:13yes1337 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:51yes534 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:12no08 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:08no013 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:19yes1122 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:19yes206 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:49yes1310 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:05no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 14:14yes2388 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:32yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:04no042 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:19yes1033 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:10yes1444 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:27yes513 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:25no02 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:11yes58 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:11yes1322 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:55yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:29yes4016 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:03yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:42yes2925 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:52yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:40yes1567 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:07yes1554 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:41yes3046 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:55yes1430 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
BMC Helix read as BMC Helix ITSM
ServiceNow IT Service Management read as ServiceNow ITSM
Unresolved, counted raw
Datadog Incidents
Everbridge
Freshstatus
HolmesGPT
Jira Service Management / Opsgenie-style incident management
SafetyCulture
SolarWinds Servicenow / SolarWinds Service Desk
Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI)
Vibe OnCall
incident-bot
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in it operations and endpoint

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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