On-call tools with a free plan in 2026
Rotations, escalation policies and paging. These tools decide who is on call now and who is notified next when nobody acknowledges. This list has 17 on-call tools. Of these, 5 are open source, 17 have a free plan and 5 can be self-hosted. Checked by hand on 30 September 2026.
- 1
AlertKick
On-call rosters, escalation policies and paging by mobile push, SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and email, with uptime, heartbeat and SSL checks and hosted status pages. Priced per server rather than per user.
- 2
AlertOps
Alert management and on-call service that runs incoming alerts through schedules and escalation policies and notifies people by voice, SMS, email and push, with workflow automation on higher plans.
- 3
Better Stack
Observability suite that pairs uptime checks, logs and metrics with on-call schedules, escalation policies, phone and SMS alerts and hosted status pages.
- 4
Cabot
Self-hosted monitoring and alerting app that watches Graphite metrics, Jenkins jobs and HTTP endpoints and alerts the person on duty by phone, SMS or email.
- 5
GoAlert
Open source on-call scheduling, escalation and paging service built at Target, with SMS and voice through Twilio, a web UI and a GraphQL API.
- 6
Grafana Cloud IRM
Grafana Cloud's incident response and on-call service: schedules, escalation chains, alert grouping, Slack incident channels and a mobile app, next to Grafana alerting.
- 7
Grafana OnCall OSS
Self-hosted edition of Grafana OnCall with schedules, escalation chains and alert grouping. No longer developed; Grafana Cloud IRM is the supported successor.
- 8
incident.io On-call
On-call module of incident.io: schedules, escalation paths, alert routing and a mobile app for paging, feeding straight into incident.io incidents.
- 9
Iris
LinkedIn's open source paging engine: escalation plans that deliver messages by email, Slack, SMS and phone call. Pairs with LinkedIn Oncall for schedules.
- 10
Jira Service Management
Atlassian's service desk product. It now holds the alerting, on-call schedule and escalation features moved over from Opsgenie, next to tickets and incidents.
- 11
LinkedIn Oncall
Open source on-call scheduler from LinkedIn with round-robin rotations, shift swaps and overrides, and shift reminders. Paging is handled by its sibling project Iris.
- 12
PagerDuty
Long-running on-call and incident platform: schedules, escalation policies, event routing and phone, SMS and push paging, with add-ons for automation and status pages.
- 13
PagerTree
On-call scheduling and alerting service with escalation layers, integrations for common monitoring tools, and push, SMS and voice notifications.
- 14
Runframe
Slack-first on-call and incident tool for small teams: schedules, alerting, incident lifecycle, postmortem drafts and hosted status pages.
- 15
SIGNL4
Mobile alerting app that delivers alerts to the team on duty by push, SMS and voice call, with acknowledgements, duty scheduling and many monitoring integrations.
- 16
TaskCall
Incident and on-call management with schedules, escalation policies, a mobile app, web app and API, and status pages.
- 17
xMatters
Everbridge's on-call and alerting product: scheduling, escalations, multi-channel notifications and a low-code flow designer for automating response steps.
Side by side
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Open source | Self-hosted | On-call schedules | Layered or follow-the-sun schedules | Overrides and swaps | Escalation policies | Escalation repeats | Phone call alerts | SMS alerts | Mobile app | Acknowledge from chat | Heartbeat checks | Alert grouping | Maintenance windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AlertKick | Free plan | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AlertOps | Free plan | Up to 5 users, basic alert routing | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Better Stack | Free plan | 10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cabot | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | - | - | - | Yes | Yes | No | - | - | - | - |
| GoAlert | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Grafana Cloud IRM | Free plan | 3 active IRM users per month | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Grafana OnCall OSS | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| incident.io On-call | Free plan | Basic plan: single-team on-call | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Iris | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | - | - | - |
| Jira Service Management | Free plan | Up to 3 agents | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| LinkedIn Oncall | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| PagerDuty | Free plan | 5 users, 1 schedule, 1 escalation policy | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes |
| PagerTree | Free plan | Up to 5 users | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes |
| Runframe | Free plan | Up to 5 users, 1 team, 1 on-call schedule | No | No | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | - | Yes | - |
| SIGNL4 | Free plan | Up to 5 users, push alerts | No | No | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| TaskCall | Free plan | Up to 5 users | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| xMatters | Free plan | Up to 5 users | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | - |
Yes: confirmed in the tool's documentation. No: documented as not offered. -: not confirmed. Plans and prices change; check each tool's own site before you decide.
More lists
- On-call tools in 2026 30
- Best on-call tools in 2026 10
- Open source on-call tools in 2026 5
- Self-hosted on-call tools in 2026 5
- Alerting tools with a free plan in 2026 58
- Alert routing tools with a free plan in 2026 7
- Alert notification tools with a free plan in 2026 13
- Incident management tools with a free plan in 2026 10
- Status page tools with a free plan in 2026 15