Incident management and on-call · October 2026 Edition
PagerDuty vs Grafana IRM
Three of fourteen models named PagerDuty first on the direct prompt; zero named Grafana IRM. PagerDuty was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and Grafana IRM by ten and PagerDuty carries 72 labels and Grafana IRM 22, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in four categories this edition.
Named in one category this edition.
First-choice share15%7%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate33%14%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#2#5A position in a field of 11; printed, not drawn.
Labels7222A 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 Grafana IRM · 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 modelsGrafana IRM
Direct304 against PagerDuty
Paraphrase224 against PagerDuty · 2 against Grafana IRM
Comparative110
Budget-constrained024 against PagerDuty
Scale-constrained401 against PagerDuty
Negative1011 against PagerDuty · 1 against Grafana IRM
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.
Every model, every framing
The eighty-four answers behind the chart above, one cell each: where PagerDuty and Grafana IRM 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 Grafana IRM first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, PagerDuty on the left and Grafana IRM on the right.The direct prompt
The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where PagerDuty and Grafana IRM stood in it.
PagerDuty first, Grafana IRM not the choice
3 of 14 modelsGrafana IRM 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
6 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
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
5 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
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, Freshservice, Rootly
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 eleven points.
PagerDuty11%#3 of 13Grafana IRM0%#10 of 13Mid-marketThe figures above
PagerDuty leads by eight points.
PagerDuty15%#2 of 11Grafana IRM7%#5 of 11Enterprise
PagerDuty leads by fifty-seven points.
PagerDuty57%#1 of 9Grafana IRM0%#– 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 Grafana IRM
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of seven in this category shown.
“Avoid Grafana OnCall Open Source” Gemini 3.5 Flash · paraphrase prompt · hard negative
“open-source version entered maintenance mode in March 2025 and is being replaced by Grafana Cloud IRM” Muse Glimmer 30B · paraphrase prompt · soft negative
“be cautious if you're not already committed to that observability ecosystem” GPT-5.4 mini · negative prompt · soft negative
“start with Grafana OnCall if you're already in the Grafana ecosystem” Kimi K2 · budget prompt · first choice
“the pragmatic pick is Squadcast or Grafana Cloud IRM for cost control” Muse Glimmer 30B · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“🏆 Top Pick: Grafana OnCall (Free / Open Source)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · budget prompt · first choice
Also compared
incident.io vs PagerDutyincident.io vs Grafana IRMPagerDuty vs FreshservicePagerDuty vs SquadcastPagerDuty vs OpsgeniePagerDuty vs RootlyPagerDuty vs FireHydrantFreshservice vs Grafana IRMSquadcast vs Grafana IRMGrafana IRM vs OpsgenieGrafana IRM vs RootlyGrafana IRM 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.