# Squadcast vs Rootly: 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; one named Rootly. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/operations/incident-management-and-on-call/squadcast-vs-rootly/

| | First-choice share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Models naming it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squadcast | 8% | #4 of 11 | 4% | 25 | 12 of 14 |
| Rootly | 5% | #7 of 11 | 3% | 33 | 12 of 14 |

## The direct prompt, model by model

- GLM 4.7 FlashX: rootly first (first choices: Rootly, incident.io) (alternatives: Jira Service Management, PagerDuty)
- Claude Haiku 4.5: neither first, one named (first choices: Freshservice) (alternatives: HaloITSM, Hyperping, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Rootly, Zenduty, ilert, incident.io)
- GPT-5.4 mini: neither first, one named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: neither first, one named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: FireHydrant, Freshservice, Rootly)
- Perplexity Sonar: neither first, one named (first choices: Freshservice) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly, incident.io)
- Kimi K2: neither first, one named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: Squadcast)
- GPT-6 Luna: neither first, one named (first choices: incident.io) (alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly)
- Muse Glimmer 30B: neither first, one 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)
- MiniMax M2.5: neither named (first choices: Freshservice, PagerDuty) (alternatives: Jira Service Management, 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 Rootly

- "some vendors (like Rootly) have separate pricing for on-call, AI, and status pages that can balloon your bill" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, scale prompt, soft negative)
- "The Best All-Around Alternative: Rootly ... Choose Rootly if you want to improve your incident response processes and save money simultaneously." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, paraphrase prompt, first choice)
- "Actively consider instead: For modern teams, look at incident.io, Rootly, FireHydrant" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt, first choice)
- "Consider modern, Slack-native platforms like incident.io, Rootly" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative 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.