We may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. It never changes a score or a ranking. How we make money
Most buyers should pick Rootly.
Choose Rootly if you want incident response priced per user, chat-based workflows, AI investigation, and retrospectives; its listed entry plan is $20 per user monthly, with On-Call another $20 and AI SRE custom-priced. Choose PagerDuty if a free five-user on-call tier or broader operations platform matters more. Its Professional plan is $21 per user monthly with annual billing ($25 monthly), while higher tiers carry annual platform fees, seat limits, and event/action caps. Compare the full stack, not entry prices alone.
01Side by side
| Rootly | PagerDuty | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $20/user/month; add-on products raise the total. | $21/user/month annually; $25 monthly Professional. |
| Free plan | No free plan; two-week trial. | Free: five users, one schedule, one escalation policy. |
| Best for | Teams managing incidents in chat. | Teams standardizing incident management and reliability operations. |
| Core strength | Incident context, probable causes, workflows, and retrospectives. | Incident detection, AIOps, AI triage, and automation. |
| Learning curve | Not published on the vendor's site. | Not published on the vendor's site. |
| Integrations and data | Existing-tool integrations; Jira action-item sync. | Incident data and Signal Intelligence Events; integrations not listed. |
| Team and seat costs | Per-user pricing; On-Call adds $20/user/month. | Platform fees, seat caps, and optional credit packs. |
| Support | Enterprise includes dedicated success and priority 24/7 support. | Support details aren't listed in published pricing data. |
Rootly Choose Rootly if
- Choose Rootly if you want a $20/user/month entry plan.
- Choose Rootly if chat-based workflows fit your incident process.
- Choose Rootly if Jira action-item syncing matters.
PagerDuty Choose PagerDuty if
- Choose PagerDuty if you need a free five-user on-call tier.
- Choose PagerDuty if you want Signal Intelligence and AI Actions.
- Choose PagerDuty if platform plans fit your team and budget.
02Pricing compared
Rootly lists Incident Response at $20 per user per month and On-Call at another $20 per user per month. The products are additive, and annual rates are not published. AI SRE requires Incident Response; its custom price is not published. Rootly offers a two-week trial, not a free plan.
PagerDuty has a free tier for five users, with one schedule, one escalation policy and 100 SMS or phone notifications per month. Professional costs $25 per user monthly, or $21 with annual billing. Higher tiers have platform fees: Starter is $2,800 a year, Essential $12,000 and Plus $48,000. Starter includes 5,000 Signal Intelligence Events and 1,000 AI Actions, and caps at 30 seats. Add-ons can increase Professional’s total, so compare the full setup rather than entry prices alone.
03Features and depth
Rootly’s Incident Response plan includes an AI agent, Scribe, retrospectives, workflows, catalog, insights, and one external and one internal status page. Its AI investigation can surface context from alerts, code changes and past incidents. Rootly says its root-cause analysis provides probable causes with confidence scores; AI SRE adds evidence, remediation steps and draft pull requests, but requires Incident Response and has custom, unpublished pricing. On-Call covers schedules, escalation policies, paging in Slack and Teams, and built-in rotations, holidays and PTO.
PagerDuty covers incident detection and coordination, Paige-assisted triage, signal intelligence, automation and incident learning. Its plan details include event and AI Action allowances, plus incident workflows on some tiers. For example, Essential lists 25,000 Signal Intelligence Events, 5,000 AI Actions and 2,000 Incident Workflows; Plus lists 150,000 events and 16,000 AI Actions. Professional’s AIOps and several other capabilities are separate add-ons. The products overlap, but their included features and pricing units differ.
04Ease of use and learning curve
Our review scores rate Rootly’s ease of use at 8/10 and PagerDuty’s at 6/10. Those scores are a useful signal, not a guarantee that either product will fit your team’s processes.
The pricing structure is worth factoring into setup decisions. Rootly separates Incident Response and On-Call into additive products, with AI SRE requiring Incident Response. PagerDuty has a free tier and a per-user Professional plan, then platform-fee tiers with seat and usage limits; several Professional features are add-ons. Before switching, map the schedules, workflows, integrations and AI features you need to the exact plan, and confirm any migration requirements with the vendors. The published information does not publish migration details.
Questions people ask
Does Rootly have a free plan?
No free plan is listed for Rootly. Its pricing information lists a two-week trial. Incident Response starts at $20 per user per month, while On-Call is another $20 per user per month if added. Annual billing rates are not published.
Is PagerDuty cheaper than Rootly?
It can be at the entry level: PagerDuty has a free tier for five users, and Professional is $21 per user monthly with annual billing. Rootly Incident Response is $20 per user monthly, but On-Call adds another $20. Compare required features, add-ons and usage limits before deciding.
Which product includes AI root-cause analysis?
Rootly lists probable root causes with evidence under its custom-priced AI SRE product, which requires Incident Response. PagerDuty describes Paige for AI-assisted triage and lists AI Actions on several platform tiers. The published pricing details do not establish that the products’ AI capabilities are equivalent.
What should we check before switching?
Compare the plan features your team uses, not just the starting prices. Check Rootly’s separate On-Call and custom-priced AI SRE costs, and PagerDuty’s platform fees, seat limits, event and AI Action allowances, and add-ons. Migration requirements and costs are not published on the vendor's site.