PagerDuty (Business) alternatives
Killing $21-41/user/mo (~$252/yr) — here are 3 verified escapes, honest trade-offs included.
the answer medium migration
Grafana OnCall · Free ⭐ 3.9K stars Escalation chains, on-call schedules and Slack alerts, open source.
you stop paying $21-41/user/mo → keep ~$252/yr
head-to-head
| PagerDuty (Business) | Grafana OnCall | |
|---|---|---|
| price | $21-41/user/mo | Free |
| self-hostable | no | yes |
| license | proprietary | AGPL-3.0 |
| verified | — | 2026-08 |
| migration | — | medium effort |
free & open source (2)
Free
Escalation chains, on-call schedules and Slack alerts, open source.
trade-offs: SMS/phone channels cost extra setup
github →cheaper, but not open source (1)
Better Stack cheaper
Free tier / ~$25+/mo
Modern incident management with generous free alerting.
trade-offs: Closed source
faq
What is the best free alternative to PagerDuty (Business)?
Grafana OnCall is the top free option — Escalation chains, on-call schedules and Slack alerts, open source.
How much can I save by switching from PagerDuty (Business)?
PagerDuty (Business) costs $21-41/user/mo, so switching to a free alternative saves roughly $252/year per seat.
Can PagerDuty (Business) be self-hosted?
Yes — Grafana OnCall and Alerta can be self-hosted for free.