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 › Incidents › Small business › September 2026 Edition

Incident management and on-call for small business buyers

Asked as “incident management platform”, and as “on-call scheduling and alerting tool”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 47 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
incident.io
Contested
30% 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%ContestedThis pageMid-marketincident.io25%ContestedStanding →EnterprisePagerDuty50%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 small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01incident.io30%10%50accepted challenger
02Better Stack21%5%40accepted challenger
03Squadcast13%0%35accepted challenger
04Hyperping9%0%25accepted challenger
05PagerDuty6%58%59criticized challenger
06Spike.sh4%6%17accepted challenger
07TaskCall4%0%10accepted challenger
08Grafana IRM2%31%16criticized challenger
Show the five products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
12ServiceNow0%91%11criticized challenger
13Opsgenie0%75%24criticized challenger
11Jira Service Management0%26%19criticized challenger
10FireHydrant0%12%17accepted challenger
09Rootly0%0%27accepted 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
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01incident.io30%
02Better Stack21%
03Squadcast13%
04Hyperping9%
05PagerDuty6%
06Spike.sh4%
07TaskCall4%
08Grafana IRM2%
09Rootly0%
10FireHydrant0%
11Jira Service Management0%
12ServiceNow0%
13Opsgenie0%

02What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, 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.
PagerDuty
58%
34 of 59 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 8 hard negative
“platforms that are mentioned as not being ideal for small businesses include: * PagerDuty: It has a high total cost of ownership (TCO) due to add-ons” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt
Opsgenie
75%
18 of 24 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 17 hard negative
“Opsgenie is the clearest example right now: Atlassian says new sales ended June 4, 2025... That makes it a poor choice for a new small business” GPT-5.4 mini, negative prompt
ServiceNow
91%
10 of 11 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 6 hard negative
“While powerful, it's designed for large organizations with dedicated IT teams. High complexity, expensive, and often overkill for small businesses” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
Jira Service Management
26%
5 of 19 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“JSM is designed for massive, process-heavy IT organizations and is far too complex and expensive for a nimble small business.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative 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

64 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. 855 links across 171 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

hyperping.com
vendor site · Hyperping39 answers · 53 citations · 10 models
monday.com
36 answers · 36 citations · 10 models
incident.io
vendor site · incident.io34 answers · 93 citations · 11 models
rootly.com
vendor site · Rootly33 answers · 45 citations · 11 models
guideflow.com
vendor site · Guideflow27 answers · 36 citations · 10 models
g2.com
24 answers · 54 citations · 10 models
augmentcode.com
vendor site · Augment Code18 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
instatus.com
vendor site · Instatus17 answers · 21 citations · 9 models
xurrent.com
vendor site · Xurrent16 answers · 17 citations · 8 models
complyjet.com
vendor site · ComplyJet16 answers · 16 citations · 9 models
runframe.io
vendor site · Runframe16 answers · 16 citations · 10 models
suptask.com
16 answers · 16 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.

monday.com/blog/service/incident-management-software
36 answers · 10 models
hyperping.com/blog/best-incident-management-tools
31 answers · 10 models
augmentcode.com/tools/best-incident-management-software
18 answers · 9 models
guideflow.com/blog/incident-management-software
17 answers · 10 models
complyjet.com/blog/best-incident-management-software
16 answers · 9 models
runframe.io/comparisons/best-incident-management-tools-for-startups
16 answers · 10 models
suptask.com/blog/best-incident-management-tools
16 answers · 8 models
rootly.com/sre/cost-effective-startup-incident-management-tools-under-500
15 answers · 8 models
incident.io/blog/incident-management-tools-for-startups
14 answers · 5 models
rootly.com/blog/15-best-incident-response-software-platforms-for-modern-eng…
14 answers · 7 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 small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which on-call scheduling and alerting tool would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top incident management platforms for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best incident management platform for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating an incident management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which incident management platforms should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Squadcast, incident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, Hyperping
Better Stack, SquadcastChanged
One alternativeSpike.sh
against: PagerDutyincident.io
Two alternativesRootly, Squadcast
against: PagerDutySquadcast
One alternativeHyperping
no first choiceagainst: OutSystems, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Spike.sh, xMatters
GPT-5.4 miniincident.io
One alternativePagerDuty
against: OpsgeniePagerDutyChanged
One alternativeJira Service Management
against: Opsgenieincident.io
Three alternativesFireHydrant, PagerDuty, Rootly
against: xMattersGrafana IRM
Two alternativesRootly, Zenduty
against: FireHydrant, PagerDutyno first choiceagainst: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie
Gemini 3.5 FlashBetter Stack
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Rootly, TaskCall, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyBetter StackHeld
Three alternativesSpike.sh, Squadcast, TaskCall
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyBetter Stack, incident.io
Three alternativesRootly, Squadcast, Zenduty
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDutyBetter Stack
Four alternativesGoAlert, Hyperping, TaskCall, Zenduty
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDutyincident.io
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly, TaskCall, Zenduty
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyagainst: BMC Helix ITSM, BigPanda, GoAlert, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, Moogsoft, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Splunk On-Call
Perplexity SonarBetter Stack
Two alternativesSquadcast, incident.io
against: PagerDutyincident.ioChanged
Two alternativesHyperping, UptimeRobot
against: PagerDutyincident.io
Four alternativesBetter Stack, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
Better Stack
Two alternativesSquadcast, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, incident.io
Grok 4.1 Fastincident.io
Two alternativesHyperping, Squadcast
against: PagerDutySpike.shChanged
Two alternativesGrafana IRM, Hyperping
against: PagerDuty, incident.ioSquadcast, incident.io
Two alternativesOpsgenie, Spike.sh
against: PagerDutyincident.io
Three alternativesBetter Stack, PagerDuty, Squadcast
against: Uptime Kumano first choiceagainst: BMC Helix ITSM, Ivanti Neurons for ITSM, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Mistral SmallHyperping, incident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, PagerDuty
OnPage, TaskCallChanged
Two alternativesHyperping, Rootly
Better Stack, incident.io
Four alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
Hyperping, Spike.sh
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Squadcast
no first choiceagainst: Better Stack, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, Zendesk, incident.io
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesHyperping, PagerDuty
HyperpingChanged
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Opsgenie
against: PagerDutyincident.io
Six alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Rootly, Runframe, Squadcast
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyPagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Squadcast
incident.io
Two alternativesRootly, Squadcast
against: PagerDutyagainst: BigPanda, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, xMatters
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldRunframeRunframe
Six alternativesBetter Stack, Hyperping, NinjaOne, Rootly, Spike.sh, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Better Stack, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Qwen 3.7 FlashHyperping
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly, incident.io
against: FireHydrant, PagerDutyBetter StackChanged
Two alternativesInstatus, Spike.sh
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty, incident.ioOpsgenie, incident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant
against: BigPanda, PagerDuty, ServiceNowRunframe, Squadcast
Two alternativesHyperping, Rootly
against: PagerDutyno first choice
Two alternativesFireHydrant, PagerDuty
against: ServiceNow, Splunkagainst: ServiceNow
Kimi K2Better Stack
Three alternativesSpike.sh, Squadcast, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutySquadcastChanged
Three alternativesHyperping, PagerDuty, xMatters
against: Opsgenieincident.io
Three alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Squadcast
against: Jira Service Management, PagerDutyOneUptime
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana IRM, Hyperping, Squadcast, incident.io
incident.io
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, Rootly, Squadcast
against: Opsgenie, PagerDutyagainst: BMC Remedy, Broadcom Layer7 API Gateway, IBM, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Splunk
GLM 4.7 FlashXincident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly
Better StackChanged
Two alternativesSpike.sh, incident.io
against: PagerDutyincident.io
Eight alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Hyperping, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, Spike.sh, Squadcast
Spiceworks
Two alternativesJira Service Management, PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: BigPanda, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow, Splunk On-Call
MiniMax M2.5Squadcast, incident.io
One alternativemonday service
against: PagerDutyBetter Stack, TaskCallChanged
Two alternativesHyperping, incident.io
PagerTree, incident.io
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, Spike.sh
PagerDuty, incident.io
Three alternativesBetter Stack, FireHydrant, Squadcast
no first choiceagainst: Benchmark Gensuite, Cority, Intelex, ServiceNow, incident.io, xMatters
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 11:06yes98 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:23yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:50yes1223 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:58yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:37yes3816 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:15yes108 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:28yes913 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:23yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:56yes919 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:18yes1933 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:26yes2545 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:18yes59 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:48yes199 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:12yes25 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:20yes1124 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:05yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:26yes3915 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:13yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:05yes1720 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:53yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:12yes1556 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:18yes1961 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:48yes1519 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:58yes837 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:55yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:57yes612 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:14yes1721 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:00yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:34yes5318 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:57yes56 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:21yes1416 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:01yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:24no037 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:43yes1457 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:10yes1360 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:44yes517 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:19yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:50no06 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:16yes1520 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:23yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:47yes3321 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:30yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:17yes1010 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:59yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:27yes527 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:18yes1035 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:19yes1455 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:28yes921 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:55no05 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:01no05 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:47yes1827 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:01yes2010 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:37yes149 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:07no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:47yes1922 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:13yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:55no035 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:43yes928 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:34no012 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:50no011 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:48yes1610 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:52yes35 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:29yes621 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:36yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:28yes4122 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:09yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:55yes2823 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:35yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:18yes9121 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:01yes2541 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:42yes3593 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:55yes2137 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
Ivanti read as Ivanti Neurons for ITSM
ServiceNow IT Service Management read as ServiceNow ITSM
Unresolved, counted raw
Benchmark Gensuite
Cority
HeyOnCall
LiveAgent
Opentext/Micro Focus
OutSystems
Pagerly
Port
Vantaj
iLert
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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