Is PagerDuty or Rootly better?

Neither clearly leads. PagerDuty starts at $21/month and Rootly at $20/user-month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, PagerDuty or Rootly?

PagerDuty starts at $21/month and Rootly at $20/user-month.

Does PagerDuty or Rootly run on more platforms?

PagerDuty runs on Web, Ios, Android, Api. Rootly runs on Web, Mobile, Slack, Microsoft Teams.

What is PagerDuty best used for?

PagerDuty is most often used for incident management, on-call scheduling, real-time alerting, service reliability. Of those, incident management and on-call scheduling are not what Rootly is typically brought in for.

What can PagerDuty do that Rootly cannot?

PagerDuty covers Alert grouping, Escalation policies, Mobile incident management, Postmortems. Rootly covers AI SRE automation, Alert routing, Call routing, AI meeting bot. Both handle Incident response, On-call management, Status pages.

Technology · head to head

PagerDuty vs Rootly

PagerDuty

Technology

Real-time operations for real-time business

From: $21/month
Rated: -

Full review Website

Rootly

Logging

AI-native incident management with automation, on-call, and root cause analysis

From: $20/user-month
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: PagerDuty aIOps, status pages, and live call routing are expensive add-ons not included in base plans, significantly increasing total cost; Rootly pricing higher than some competitors for basic features
They diverge on capability: PagerDuty covers Alert grouping, Rootly covers AI SRE automation.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which PagerDuty and Rootly actually diverge.

Attributes where PagerDuty and Rootly differ
Attribute	PagerDuty	Rootly
Starting price	$21/month	$20/user-month
Pricing model	Unknown	subscription
Platforms	Web, Ios, Android, Api	Web, Mobile, Slack, Microsoft Teams
Category	Technology	Logging
Founded	2009	2020

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in PagerDuty

Alert grouping
Escalation policies
Mobile incident management
Postmortems
Event intelligence
Datadog
New Relic
Splunk

Only in Rootly

AI SRE automation
Alert routing
Call routing
AI meeting bot

Both cover

Incident response
On-call management
Status pages

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

PagerDuty

Incident managementnot Rootly
On-call schedulingnot Rootly
Real-time alertingnot Rootly
Service reliabilitynot Rootly
Digital operationsnot Rootly

Rootly

Automate on-call and incident response workflowsnot PagerDuty
Run root cause analysis with AI assistancenot PagerDuty
Track and improve Mean Time to Mitigation (MTTR)not PagerDuty
Coordinate response across distributed teamsnot PagerDuty
Learn from post-incident retrospectivesnot PagerDuty

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

PagerDuty

AIOps, status pages, and live call routing are expensive add-ons not included in base plans, significantly increasing total cost
Complex escalation policies require workarounds for scheduling patterns beyond basic weekly rotations
5-user minimum requirement forces costs even for small teams, with forced Business tier upgrades adding $12,000+ annually for larger teams

Rootly

Pricing higher than some competitors for basic features
AI SRE features require separate contact-sales engagement
Learning curve for advanced automation features
Per-user pricing increases costs as team grows

Pricing, plan by plan

PagerDuty

$21/month

No published plan breakdown. See the PagerDuty review.

Rootly

$20/user-month

Incident Response Essentials$20/user-month
- Response with Slack integration
- @Rootly AI Chat
- AI Similar Incidents detection
Incident Response Enterprise$undefined/custom
- All Essentials features
- Custom forms and incident types
- Private incidents
On-Call Essentials$20/user-month
- Alert grouping and routing
- Live call routing (1 phone number)
- Schedules and escalation policies
On-Call Enterprise$undefined/custom
- All Essentials features
- 5 phone numbers for call routing
- Unlimited schedules

Which should you pick?

Choose PagerDuty if

You need alert grouping.
You work on Web, Ios, Android, Api.
You also want escalation policies.

PagerDuty review

Choose Rootly if

You need ai sre automation.
You work on Web, Mobile, Slack, Microsoft Teams.
You also want alert routing.

Rootly review

Questions people ask

Is PagerDuty or Rootly better?: Neither clearly leads. PagerDuty starts at $21/month and Rootly at $20/user-month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, PagerDuty or Rootly?: PagerDuty starts at $21/month and Rootly at $20/user-month.
Does PagerDuty or Rootly run on more platforms?: PagerDuty runs on Web, Ios, Android, Api. Rootly runs on Web, Mobile, Slack, Microsoft Teams.
What is PagerDuty best used for?: PagerDuty is most often used for incident management, on-call scheduling, real-time alerting, service reliability. Of those, incident management and on-call scheduling are not what Rootly is typically brought in for.
What can PagerDuty do that Rootly cannot?: PagerDuty covers Alert grouping, Escalation policies, Mobile incident management, Postmortems. Rootly covers AI SRE automation, Alert routing, Call routing, AI meeting bot. Both handle Incident response, On-call management, Status pages.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

PagerDuty: What is the minimum cost to use PagerDuty?

PagerDuty requires a minimum of 5 users per account. The Professional plan starts at $21 per user per month ($105/month minimum), with annual billing providing 16% discount.

Source

Rootly: How much does Rootly cost?

Rootly charges $20/user/month for both Incident Response and On-Call Essentials plans. Enterprise plans require contacting sales. Startups under 100 employees with less than $50M raised get up to 50% discount.

Source

PagerDuty: What integrations does PagerDuty support?

PagerDuty integrates with 750+ monitoring, ticketing, and collaboration tools including Datadog, Slack, Jira, ServiceNow, New Relic, and Nagios.

Source

Rootly: What is Rootly AI SRE?

AI SRE is an advanced feature that provides automated root cause analysis, alert correlation with system changes, impact analysis, and remediation suggestions. Pricing requires contact with sales.

Source

PagerDuty: How much does AIOps cost in PagerDuty?

AIOps Intelligence is sold separately as an add-on starting at $699 per month, and is not included in any of the base plans.

Source

Rootly: Does Rootly integrate with Slack?

Yes, Rootly natively integrates with Slack for incident response workflows, allowing teams to manage incidents directly in Slack.

Source

Rootly: Are there discounts for small companies?

Yes, startups under 100 employees or less than 25 employees can get special pricing up to 50% discount. Contact Rootly sales for details.

Source

PagerDuty vs Rootly

PagerDuty

Rootly

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in PagerDuty

Only in Rootly

Both cover

What people use each for

PagerDuty

Rootly

Where each one falls short

PagerDuty

Rootly

Pricing, plan by plan

PagerDuty

Rootly

Which should you pick?

Choose PagerDuty if

Choose Rootly if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on PagerDuty

More on Rootly

Keep looking

Other head to heads