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Incident management and on-call · October 2026 Edition

PagerDuty vs Squadcast

Three of fourteen models named PagerDuty first on the direct prompt; zero named Squadcast. PagerDuty was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and Squadcast by twelve and PagerDuty carries 72 labels and Squadcast 25, so the shares are not directly comparable.

PagerDuty

criticized challenger

Named in four categories this edition.

Squadcast

accepted challenger

Named in one category this edition.

First-choice share15%8%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate33%4%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#2#4A position in a field of 11; printed, not drawn.
Labels7225A 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 Squadcast · 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 modelsSquadcast
Direct304 against PagerDuty
Paraphrase224 against PagerDuty
Comparative110
Budget-constrained034 against PagerDuty
Scale-constrained401 against PagerDuty
Negative1011 against PagerDuty · 1 against Squadcast
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 Squadcast were named in the same answer fifty-five times, of the 272 answers naming PagerDuty and the 60 naming Squadcast. In those answers Squadcast took the first choice eight times and PagerDuty eight.

Every model, every framing

The eighty-four answers behind the chart above, one cell each: where PagerDuty and Squadcast stood in it.
ModelDirectParaphraseComparativeBudget-constrainedScale-constrainedNegative
Claude Haiku 4.5
GPT-5.4 mini
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Perplexity Sonar
Grok 4.20
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 Squadcast first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, PagerDuty on the left and Squadcast on the right.

The direct prompt

The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where PagerDuty and Squadcast stood in it.

PagerDuty first, Squadcast not the choice

3 of 14 modelsSquadcast 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
Perplexity SonarFreshservice alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io
Grok 4.20Freshservice alternatives: InvGate Service Management, Jira Service Management, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, PagerDuty, incident.io
Kimi K2incident.io alternatives: Squadcast
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
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, Freshservice, Rootly
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io alternatives: Freshservice, Jira Service Management
Llama 4 Maverickno first choice

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 four points.
PagerDuty11%#3 of 13
Squadcast7%#4 of 13
The full small business standing →
Mid-marketThe figures above
PagerDuty leads by seven points.
PagerDuty15%#2 of 11
Squadcast8%#4 of 11
The full mid-market standing →
Enterprise
PagerDuty leads by fifty-seven points.
PagerDuty57%#1 of 9
Squadcast0%#– of 9
The full enterprise standing →

What 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 Squadcast

Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Four of five in this category shown.

“Squadcast (now SolarWinds) — Be cautious” DeepSeek V4 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“Squadcast is the cheapest credible option, with a free tier up to 5 users and Pro at $12/user/mo” Claude Haiku 4.5 · budget prompt · first choice
“The best incident management platform for a company with a limited budget is Squadcast” Llama 4 Maverick · budget prompt · first choice
“I'd recommend starting with Squadcast (if you have under 5 team members)” MiniMax M2.5 · budget prompt · first choice
Also compared

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.