AI Indexes
IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition, published September 17, 2026 · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
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. 60 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
32%
Contested · PagerDuty 15%
32incident.io15PagerDuty10Freshservice43others

32% of first choices, contested.

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.

The 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.io32%5%57endorsed leader
02PagerDuty15%33%72criticized challenger
03Freshservice10%6%17accepted challenger
04Squadcast8%4%25accepted challenger
05Grafana IRM7%14%22accepted challenger
06Opsgenie7%72%50criticized challenger
07Rootly5%3%33accepted challenger
08FireHydrant2%10%21accepted challenger
09Splunk On-Call2%33%15criticized challenger
Show the two products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
11ServiceNow ITSM0%64%22criticized challenger
10Jira Service Management0%20%25accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight products, each against each

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
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01incident.io32%
02PagerDuty15%
03Freshservice10%
04Squadcast8%
05Grafana IRM7%
06Opsgenie7%
07Rootly5%
08FireHydrant2%
09Splunk On-Call2%
10Jira Service Management0%
11ServiceNow ITSM0%

What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, 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
72%
36 of 50 labels negative · 14 of 12 models · 26 hard negative
“Do not buy standalone Opsgenie right now unless you are fully committing to migrating to the broader, consolidated Jira Service Management (JSM) ecosystem.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, scale prompt
PagerDuty
33%
24 of 72 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Avoid PagerDuty unless you truly need enterprise-grade features” Kimi K2, budget prompt
ServiceNow ITSM
64%
14 of 22 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“**ServiceNow** currently requires extra scrutiny due to its recent critical security disclosures” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Jira Service Management
20%
5 of 25 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“the main platforms to be cautious about are Opsgenie, Jira Service Management... warn that its ITSM complexity can slow incident response” Perplexity Sonar, negative prompt

What they cite

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

Sites the answers cite

77 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 1041 links across 190 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · incident.io55 answers · 140 citations · 14 models
vendor site · Rootly40 answers · 77 citations · 14 models
vendor site · Motadata35 answers · 35 citations · 11 models
vendor site · G231 answers · 45 citations · 12 models
vendor site · PagerDuty27 answers · 43 citations · 10 models
25 answers · 26 citations · 10 models
vendor site · ComplyJet24 answers · 24 citations · 11 models
vendor site · InvGate22 answers · 26 citations · 10 models
19 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Guideflow18 answers · 26 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Atlassian18 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Augment Code18 answers · 18 citations · 10 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.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best incident management platform”, “incident management platform”, “incident management platforms”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
incident.io incident.io32%1721,9007065,369$108121
PagerDuty pagerduty.com15%24927,10068582,470$1,433118
Freshservice freshworks.com10%3818,100221111,586$14,486113
Squadcast squadcast.com8%572,9004147
Grafana IRM grafana.com7%40260484,520116
Opsgenie atlassian.com
Opsgenie 7%, Jira Service Management 0%, Atlassian Statuspage 0%
7%2926,6001884,724,388$5,906614
Rootly rootly.com5%1051,9003013,774232
Better Stack betterstack.com5%2851,6001,01741,811119
Spiceworks spiceworks.com
Spiceworks 2%, Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk 2%
3%305,4001222,284,947
FireHydrant firehydrant.com2%4149,5001920,0806

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 18 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (atlassian.com, augmentcode.com, incident.io, rootly.com). The first result for “best incident management platform” is incident.io.

How 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.
ShowHide
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 4.5Freshservice
Seven alternativesHaloITSM, Hyperping, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Rootly, Zenduty, ilert, incident.io
against: PagerDuty
OpsgenieChanged
Three alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, Squadcast
no first choiceagainst: OpsgenieSquadcast
Two alternativesHyperping, Spike.sh
no first choiceagainst: HaloITSM, Instatus, Jira Service Management, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, incident.io
GPT-5.4 miniincident.io
Two alternativesPagerDuty, Rootly
PagerDutyChanged
One alternativeJira Service Management
against: Opsgenie
PagerDuty, incident.io
One alternativexMatters
against: Opsgenie
incident.io
Two alternativesGrafana IRM, Rootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: Blameless, Datadog On-Call, FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io
Three alternativesFireHydrant, Freshservice, Rootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Rootly, incident.ioChanged
One alternativeBetter Stack
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
PagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesJira Service Management, Rootly
against: Freshservice, Opsgenie, ServiceNow ITSM
Better Stack
Six alternativesGoAlert, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, OneUptime, Squadcast, Zenduty
incident.io
One alternativeRootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
against: BMC Remedy, FireHydrant, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Perplexity SonarFreshservice
Three alternativesPagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io
Hyperping, incident.ioChanged
One alternativexMatters
against: PagerDuty, UptimeRobot
no first choiceSpiceworks, incident.io
Four alternativesFreshservice, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Rootly, Squadcast
no first choiceagainst: BMC Helix ITSM, BigPanda, Jira Service Management, Moogsoft, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, xMatters
Grok 4.20Freshservice
Five alternativesInvGate Service Management, Jira Service Management, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, PagerDuty, incident.io
against: ServiceNow ITSM
OpsgenieChanged
Three alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, incident.io
against: Splunk On-Call
PagerDuty
Six alternativesOpsgenie, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, Squadcast, incident.io, xMatters
incident.io
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, Squadcast
PagerDuty, incident.io
One alternativeFreshservice
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call
Mistral SmallFreshservice, PagerDuty
One alternativeManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Opsgenie, PagerDutyChanged
One alternativeAlertOps
PagerDuty
Five alternativesDatadog Incident Management, FireHydrant, Freshservice, Jira Service Management, incident.io
against: Opsgenie
Splunk On-Call
Three alternativesRootly, Squadcast, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Atlassian’s Jira Service Management (JSM) bundled with Opsgenie, Opsgenie
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
incident.ioHeld
Three alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, Rootly
against: Opsgenie
PagerDuty
Four alternativesFireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, incident.io
against: ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call
Grafana IRM
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Zenduty, incident.io
PagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesJira Service Management, Splunk On-Call
against: Opsgenie, Rootly
against: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, Squadcast
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldno first choiceSquadcast
Two alternativesPagerDuty, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenie
Qwen 3.7 FlashPagerDuty
Three alternativesDatadog Incident Management, FireHydrant, Opsgenie
RootlyChanged
Three alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, incident.io
PagerDuty
Two alternativesRootly, incident.io
against: Opsgenie
FireHydrant
Three alternativesAtlassian Statuspage, Opsgenie, UptimeRobot
against: PagerDuty
PagerDuty
Four alternativesFireHydrant, Opsgenie, Phoebe, Statuspage
against: IBM QRadar SOAR, Splunk SOAR
against: NinjaOne, OnPage, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, SolarWinds, incident.io
Kimi K2incident.io
One alternativeSquadcast
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Opsgenie, incident.ioChanged
One alternativeSquadcast
against: PagerDuty
PagerDuty
Three alternativesFireHydrant, Rootly, incident.io
against: Atlassian, Datadog Incident Management, ServiceNow ITSM
Better Stack, Grafana IRM
Two alternativesJira Service Management, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, ServiceNow ITSMagainst: CrowdStrike, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
GLM 4.7 FlashXRootly, incident.io
Two alternativesJira Service Management, PagerDuty
Grafana IRMChanged
Two alternativesPagerDuty, Squadcast
PagerDuty
Two alternativesRootly, incident.io
against: Opsgenie
Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk, Zammad
Five alternativesGrafana IRM, Jira Service Management, Mattermost Incident Response, PagerDuty, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: ClickUp, Jira Service Management, ServiceNow ITSM, Zendesk
MiniMax M2.5Freshservice, PagerDuty
Two alternativesJira Service Management, incident.io
Squadcast, incident.ioChanged
One alternativePagerDuty
against: Opsgenie
PagerDuty
Five alternativesFireHydrant, Jira Service Management, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, incident.io
against: Opsgenie
Squadcast, Zenduty
One alternativeincident.io
against: PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The 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-4-5-202510012026-10-01 08:35yes913 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 07:59yes47 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 09:26yes1523 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 11:27yes193 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 13:11yes2110 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 09:15yes53 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 11:10yes2328 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 09:19yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 10:40no037 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 10:53yes1724 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 11:53yes2353 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 11:56yes1126 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 11:29no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 09:40yes35 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 08:58yes1428 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 12:44yes183 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 12:05yes227 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 08:45yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 09:50yes2325 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 09:43yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 13:07yes1040 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 11:50yes1923 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 09:14yes2542 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 12:03yes1015 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 09:57yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 13:52yes714 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 13:24yes1326 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 09:17yes195 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 07:37yes228 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 11:31yes1310 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 12:09yes2547 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 13:03yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 12:13yes1049 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 09:33yes2038 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 13:23yes2546 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 08:14yes1321 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 08:01yes910 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 09:31yes25 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 13:15yes2022 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 09:38yes173 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 08:58yes185 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 08:39yes52 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 10:25yes2419 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 09:17yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 11:06no033 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 08:54yes1528 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 09:52yes24113 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 11:05yes58 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 10:37no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 10:13no07 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 13:43yes1228 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 07:53yes195 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 11:35yes1213 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 09:07no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 09:33yes2546 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 13:50yes52 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 13:33no037 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 12:16yes1326 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 13:16yes1968 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 10:36yes59 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 13:38yes169 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 11:05yes25 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 08:00yes1421 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 07:45yes203 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 09:31yes209 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 09:09yes53 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 11:05yes2340 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 10:12yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 12:01yes1435 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 08:25yes2520 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 11:06yes2424 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 09:35yes1519 s

Normalization in this category

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

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
BMC Helix read as BMC Helix ITSM
ServiceNow read as ServiceNow ITSM
ServiceNow (IT Incident Module) read as ServiceNow ITSM
ServiceNow IT Service Management read as ServiceNow ITSM
Unresolved, counted raw
Atlassian’s Jira Service Management (JSM) bundled with Opsgenie
Blameless
ClickUp Incident Management
ManageEngine Service Desk
Phoebe
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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