Incident management and on-call · October 2026 Edition
PagerDuty vs FireHydrant
Three of fourteen models named PagerDuty first on the direct prompt; zero named FireHydrant. PagerDuty was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and FireHydrant by ten and PagerDuty carries 72 labels and FireHydrant 21, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in four categories this edition.
Named in two categories this edition.
First-choice share15%2%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate33%10%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#2#8A position in a field of 11; printed, not drawn.
Labels7221A count; the two differ.
The two percentage rows are drawn on one 0 to 100 track, PagerDuty reading right to left. Rank and label count are printed, not drawn.incident.io was named alongside these two in eleven of the fourteen direct answers. incident.io vs PagerDuty · incident.io vs FireHydrant · PagerDuty vs Freshservice
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the incident management and on-call page.
By framing
How many of the fourteen models made each the first choice, per way of asking, and how many argued against it.
PagerDutyFirst choices, of fourteen modelsFireHydrant
Direct304 against PagerDuty
Paraphrase204 against PagerDuty
Comparative110
Budget-constrained014 against PagerDuty
Scale-constrained401 against PagerDuty
Negative1011 against PagerDuty · 2 against FireHydrant
Bars are first choices, 0 to 14 each sideModels that argued againstA model can name both, so the two sides of a row do not sum to fourteen.
Across every category in the October 2026 Edition, PagerDuty and FireHydrant were named in the same answer forty-nine times, of the 272 answers naming PagerDuty and the 51 naming FireHydrant. In those answers FireHydrant took the first choice two times and PagerDuty seventeen.
Every model, every framing
The eighty-four answers behind the chart above, one cell each: where PagerDuty and FireHydrant stood in it.
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | | | | |||
| GPT-5.4 mini | | | | | | |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | | | | | | |
| Perplexity Sonar | | | | |||
| Grok 4.1 Fast | | | | | | |
| Mistral Small | | | | |||
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | | | | | | |
| Llama 4 Maverick | | |||||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | | | | | | |
| Kimi K2 | | | | | | |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | | | | | | |
| MiniMax M2.5 | | | | | | |
| GPT-6 Luna | | | | | | |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | | | | | | |
PagerDuty FireHydrant first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, PagerDuty on the left and FireHydrant on the right.The direct prompt
The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where PagerDuty and FireHydrant stood in it.
PagerDuty first, FireHydrant an alternative
3 of 14 modelsFireHydrant was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Mistral SmallFreshservice, PagerDuty alternatives: ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
Qwen 3.7 FlashPagerDuty alternatives: Datadog Incident Management, FireHydrant, Opsgenie
MiniMax M2.5Freshservice, PagerDuty alternatives: Jira Service Management, incident.io
Neither was the first choice, one was named
7 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.GPT-5.4 miniincident.io alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, Freshservice, Rootly
Perplexity SonarFreshservice alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io
Grok 4.1 FastFreshservice alternatives: InvGate Service Management, Jira Service Management, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, PagerDuty, incident.io
GLM 4.7 FlashXRootly, incident.io alternatives: Jira Service Management, PagerDuty
GPT-6 Lunaincident.io alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly
Muse Glimmer 30BFreshservice alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io
Neither was named
4 of 14 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.Claude Haiku 4.5Freshservice alternatives: HaloITSM, Hyperping, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Rootly, Zenduty, ilert, incident.io
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io alternatives: Freshservice, Jira Service Management
Llama 4 Maverickno first choice
Kimi K2incident.io alternatives: Squadcast
Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
By buyer segment
The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment and they are never added together. The figures above are the mid-market standing, which is the one the category orders by.
Small business
PagerDuty leads by nine points.
PagerDuty11%#3 of 13FireHydrant2%#9 of 13Mid-marketThe figures above
PagerDuty leads by thirteen points.
PagerDuty15%#2 of 11FireHydrant2%#8 of 11Enterprise
PagerDuty leads by fifty-seven points.
PagerDuty57%#1 of 9FireHydrant0%#9 of 9What the models said about PagerDuty
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“Avoid PagerDuty unless you truly need enterprise-grade features” Kimi K2 · budget prompt · hard negative
“The legacy heavyweight. Unrivaled for raw paging and alert routing reliability, but can feel clunky, expensive, and require a lot of manual configuration” Gemini 3.5 Flash · scale prompt · soft negative
“their paid tiers are expensive. Their "Starter" edition is free, but it lacks advanced reporting and custom escalation rules” Qwen 3.7 Flash · budget prompt · soft negative
“the sweet spot is likely a modern "Cloud-Native" Incident Manager (like PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Statuspage, or newer competitors like FireHydrant or Phoebe)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · scale prompt · first choice
“PagerDuty – Best for enterprise incident management, strong end-to-end orchestration, AI/automation, and Slack/Teams integration. Pricing higher, feature rich.” Muse Glimmer 30B · scale prompt · first choice
“Industry leader with 750+ integrations ... Choose PagerDuty if you need dedicated alerting, on-call management, and have diverse tooling” MiniMax M2.5 · comparative prompt · first choice
What the models said about FireHydrant
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Five of six in this category shown.
“potentially fine products, but be cautious if you're sensitive to ownership changes, product consolidation, or roadmap uncertainty” GPT-5.4 mini · negative prompt · soft negative
“FireHydrant was acquired by Freshworks... acquisitions often trigger shifts in pricing” Gemini 3.5 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“The Best All-Rounder: FireHydrant ... widely considered the best modern alternative to expensive enterprise platforms” Qwen 3.7 Flash · budget prompt · first choice
“Best for: Teams wanting an all-in-one platform spanning alerting, on-call, incident response, and retrospectives” DeepSeek V4 Flash · comparative prompt · alternative
“Best for ITIL & Customer Support Alignment ... the Freshworks ecosystem is highly compelling.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · direct prompt · alternative
Also compared
incident.io vs PagerDutyincident.io vs FireHydrantPagerDuty vs FreshservicePagerDuty vs SquadcastPagerDuty vs Grafana IRMPagerDuty vs OpsgeniePagerDuty vs RootlyFreshservice vs FireHydrantSquadcast vs FireHydrantGrafana IRM vs FireHydrantOpsgenie vs FireHydrantRootly vs FireHydrantAll twenty-eight head-to-head pages and the full incidents standing
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.