# Squadcast vs Grafana IRM: which do AI models recommend for incidents, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, Incident management and on-call. Zero of fourteen models named Squadcast first on the direct prompt; zero named Grafana IRM. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/operations/incident-management-and-on-call/squadcast-vs-grafana-irm/

| | First-choice share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Models naming it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squadcast | 8% | #4 of 11 | 4% | 25 | 12 of 14 |
| Grafana IRM | 7% | #5 of 11 | 14% | 22 | 10 of 14 |

## The direct prompt, model by model

- Kimi K2: neither first, one named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: Squadcast)
- Claude Haiku 4.5: neither named (first choices: Freshservice) (alternatives: HaloITSM, Hyperping, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Rootly, Zenduty, ilert, incident.io)
- GPT-5.4 mini: neither named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: neither named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: FireHydrant, Freshservice, Rootly)
- Perplexity Sonar: neither named (first choices: Freshservice) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io)
- Grok 4.1 Fast: neither named (first choices: Freshservice) (alternatives: InvGate Service Management, Jira Service Management, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, PagerDuty, incident.io)
- Mistral Small: neither named (first choices: Freshservice, PagerDuty) (alternatives: ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus)
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: neither named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: Freshservice, Jira Service Management)
- Llama 4 Maverick: neither named
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: neither named (first choices: PagerDuty) (alternatives: Datadog Incident Management, FireHydrant, Opsgenie)
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: neither named (first choices: Rootly, incident.io) (alternatives: Jira Service Management, PagerDuty)
- MiniMax M2.5: neither named (first choices: Freshservice, PagerDuty) (alternatives: Jira Service Management, incident.io)
- GPT-6 Luna: neither named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly)
- Muse Glimmer 30B: neither named (first choices: Freshservice) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io)

## What the models said about Squadcast

- "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)

## What the models said about Grafana IRM

- "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)

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. Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category. Published under CC BY 4.0; the output is the models' output, and nothing here is a recommendation by the index.