September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › IT › IT operations and endpoint › Incidents · September 2026 Edition

Incident management and on-call

Asked as “incident management platform”, and as “on-call scheduling and alerting tool”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 51 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
25%
Contested · PagerDuty 22%
25incident.io22PagerDuty10Squadcast43others

25% of first choices, contested.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01incident.io25%0%50accepted challenger
02PagerDuty22%31%59criticized challenger
03Squadcast10%0%25accepted challenger
04Rootly8%0%42accepted challenger
05Hyperping8%0%14accepted challenger
06Opsgenie8%59%46criticized challenger
07Better Stack6%6%17accepted challenger
08xMatters2%36%11criticized challenger
Show the six products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
14ServiceNow ITSM0%63%19criticized challenger
13Splunk On-Call0%47%17criticized challenger
12Grafana IRM0%29%14criticized challenger
10Freshservice0%20%15accepted challenger
11FireHydrant0%18%17accepted challenger
09Jira Service Management0%10%29accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01incident.io25%
02PagerDuty22%
03Squadcast10%
04Rootly8%
05Hyperping8%
06Opsgenie8%
07Better Stack6%
08xMatters2%
09Jira Service Management0%
10Freshservice0%
11FireHydrant0%
12Grafana IRM0%
13Splunk On-Call0%
14ServiceNow ITSM0%

What they warned about

Seven of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small, Qwen 3.7 Flash, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Opsgenie
59%
27 of 46 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 21 hard negative
“Verdict: Caution Advised / Plan Migration Immediately ... standalone OpsGenie is facing deprecation, with the full sunsetting scheduled for April 2027” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
PagerDuty
31%
18 of 59 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“One of the most widely used platforms, but has received significant criticism for: High costs... Poor support” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
ServiceNow ITSM
63%
12 of 19 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Avoid enterprise-heavy like ServiceNow (too complex/pricey)” Grok 4.20, direct prompt
Splunk On-Call
47%
8 of 17 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Avoid ... basic tools like VictorOps/Splunk On-Call (now pricier, less innovative)” Grok 4.20, direct prompt

What they cite

Twelve of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited and eight the search results they consulted.

Sites the answers cite

65 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 827 links across 180 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Rootly46 answers · 66 citations · 12 models
vendor site · incident.io39 answers · 102 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Hyperping39 answers · 46 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Augment Code26 answers · 26 citations · 9 models
25 answers · 25 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Xurrent23 answers · 26 citations · 10 models
vendor site · ComplyJet16 answers · 16 citations · 7 models
15 answers · 15 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Better Stack14 answers · 15 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Guideflow12 answers · 14 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Instatus12 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
vendor site · G211 answers · 27 citations · 9 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best incident management platform”, “incident management platform”, “incident management platforms”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
incident.io incident.io25%1701,9007065,369$108121
PagerDuty pagerduty.com22%20527,10068582,470$1,433118
Squadcast squadcast.com10%382,9004147
Rootly rootly.com8%971,9003013,774232
Hyperping hyperping.com8%25140067,358
Opsgenie atlassian.com
Opsgenie 8%, Jira Service Management 0%
8%3356,6001884,724,388$5,906614
Better Stack betterstack.com6%3111,6001,01741,811119
Zenduty zenduty.com4%2232041990
Spike.sh spike.sh2%152006,691
Uptime Kuma uptime.com2%49950,059$4212

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 18 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (augmentcode.com, incident.io, rootly.com, xurrent.com). The first result for “best incident management platform” is incident.io.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best incident management platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which on-call scheduling and alerting tool would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top incident management platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best incident management platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an incident management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which incident management platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Rootly
Three alternativesFreshservice, Squadcast, Zenduty
Opsgenie, PagerDutyChanged
Three alternativesFireHydrant, Grafana IRM, incident.io
against: xMatters
Rootly
Three alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Squadcast
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Jira Service Management, Spike.sh
against: AlertOps
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniincident.io
Three alternativesJira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
against: FireHydrant
incident.ioHeld
One alternativePagerDuty
against: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie
PagerDuty
Three alternativesFireHydrant, Rootly, Splunk On-Call
against: Opsgenie
xMatters
Two alternativesJira Service Management, PagerDuty
against: Opsgenie
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
incident.ioHeld
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Jira Service Management
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
PagerDuty, incident.io
Three alternativesFreshservice, Opsgenie, Rootly
against: ServiceNow ITSM
Better Stack, Xurrent IMR
Three alternativesHyperping, Squadcast, TaskCall
against: Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Rootly, incident.io
One alternativePagerDuty
against: FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie
against: FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Perplexity Sonarincident.io
Four alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Zenduty
incident.ioHeld
One alternativeHyperping
no first choice
Five alternativesJira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, incident.io
against: Opsgenie
Better Stack
Three alternativesHyperping, Squadcast, incident.io
against: PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: Freshservice, Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, ServiceNow ITSM, SolarWinds Service Desk, SysAid
Grok 4.20PagerDuty
Four alternativesRootly, Squadcast, Zenduty, incident.io
against: ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call
PagerDutyHeld
Two alternativesSquadcast, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call
PagerDuty
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, incident.io
incident.io
Four alternativesFireHydrant, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Squadcast
PagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesOpsgenie, Rootly
against: ServiceNow ITSM
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Mistral SmallPagerDuty, incident.io
Two alternativesFreshservice, Zenduty
HyperpingChanged
Three alternativesRootly, Squadcast, incident.io
PagerDuty, incident.io
Three alternativesBigPanda, FireHydrant, Rootly
Hyperping, Squadcast
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Rootly, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: Freshservice, OnPage, Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io
Two alternativesFireHydrant, Rootly
against: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
incident.ioHeld
Four alternativesGrafana IRM, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
against: Opsgenie
no first choice
Seven alternativesFireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, incident.io
against: Freshservice, Opsgenie, SolarWinds, monday service
Squadcast
Four alternativesGrafana IRM, Hyperping, Spike.sh, incident.io
against: Better Stack, PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, PagerDutyagainst: BMC Helix ITSM, BMC Remedy, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldno first choiceRootlyno first choicenothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashPagerDuty, Zenduty
Four alternativesFreshservice, Hyperping, Opsgenie, incident.io
Opsgenie, PagerDutyChanged
One alternativeSquadcast
against: Splunk On-Call
PagerDuty
Three alternativesRootly, Zenduty, incident.io
Squadcast
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Uptime Kuma, incident.io
Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Two alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management
against: BMC Helix ITSM, ServiceNow ITSM
against: Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
Kimi K2PagerDuty
Four alternativesFreshservice, Rootly, Zenduty, incident.io
against: Opsgenie, ServiceNow ITSM
PagerDutyHeld
Two alternativesOpsgenie, Splunk On-Call
PagerDuty
Seven alternativesBigPanda, FireHydrant, Grafana IRM, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, Squadcast, incident.io
against: Opsgenie
OneUptime, Spike.sh, Squadcast
Five alternativesAlertOps, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, Rootly, TheHive
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenieagainst: Datadog On-Call, Grafana IRM, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM, Spiceworks, Splunk On-Call
GLM 4.7 FlashXZenduty
Four alternativesJira Service Management, Opsgenie, Rootly, incident.io
against: PagerDuty
RootlyChanged
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Hyperping, Opsgenie, incident.io
against: PagerDuty
no first choiceOpsgenie
Seven alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana IRM, Jira Service Management, OneUptime, PagerDuty, Squadcast, incident.io
no first choiceagainst: BMC Remedy, Opsgenie, ServiceNow ITSM
MiniMax M2.5PagerDuty
Four alternativesFreshservice, Jira Service Management, Rootly, incident.io
Hyperping, incident.ioChanged
One alternativeRootly
against: PagerDuty
PagerDuty
Five alternativesOpsgenie, Rootly, ServiceNow ITSM, Splunk On-Call, xMatters
Better Stack, Hyperping, Uptime Kuma
Two alternativesFreshservice, Squadcast
against: PagerDuty
no first choiceagainst: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:30yes99 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:12yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:19yes923 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:51yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:55yes2213 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:07yes56 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:46yes1823 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:12yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:19yes525 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:29yes922 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:27yes1227 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:06yes1345 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:21no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:03yes35 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:52yes1124 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:58yes204 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 14:08yes4017 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:20yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:17yes1719 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:31yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:42no041 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:38yes1017 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:44yes9105 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:11yes932 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:38yes98 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:18yes610 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:37yes1022 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:40yes2015 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 13:50yes2115 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:37yes1111 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:28yes1318 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:03yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:51yes551 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:30yes1024 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:39yes5112 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:25yes528 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:26yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:28yes34 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:35yes1618 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:12yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 13:27yes4319 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:17yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 13:12yes1733 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:10yes54 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:39yes1045 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:24yes1027 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:13yes1337 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:51yes534 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:12no08 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:08no013 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:19yes1122 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:19yes206 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 13:49yes1310 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:05no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 14:14yes2388 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:32yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:04no042 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:19yes1033 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:10yes1444 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:27yes513 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:25no02 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:11yes58 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:11yes1322 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:55yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:29yes4016 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:03yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:42yes2925 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:52yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:40yes1567 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:07yes1554 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:41yes3046 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:55yes1430 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
BMC Helix read as BMC Helix ITSM
Datadog Incidents read as Datadog Incident Management
ServiceNow read as ServiceNow ITSM
ServiceNow (ITSM) read as ServiceNow ITSM
ServiceNow IT Service Management read as ServiceNow ITSM
Unresolved, counted raw
Freshstatus
SolarWinds Servicenow / SolarWinds Service Desk
incident-bot
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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