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Incident management and on-call · November 2026 Edition

FireHydrant vs Squadcast

Zero of fourteen models named FireHydrant first on the direct prompt; zero named Squadcast. FireHydrant was named by thirteen of the fourteen models and Squadcast by twelve and FireHydrant carries 34 labels and Squadcast 20, so the shares are not directly comparable.

FireHydrant

accepted challenger

Named in three categories this edition.

Squadcast

accepted challenger

Named in one category this edition.

First-choice share4%4%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate9%0%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#4#5A position in a field of 13; printed, not drawn.
Labels3420A count; the two differ.
The two percentage rows are drawn on one 0 to 100 track, FireHydrant reading right to left. Rank and label count are printed, not drawn.incident.io was named alongside these two in twelve of the fourteen direct answers. incident.io vs FireHydrant · incident.io vs Squadcast · PagerDuty vs FireHydrant

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the incident management and on-call page.

By framing

How many of the fourteen models made each the first choice, per way of asking, and how many argued against it.
FireHydrantFirst choices, of fourteen modelsSquadcast
Direct00
Paraphrase01
Comparative00
Budget-constrained111 against FireHydrant
Scale-constrained10
Negative002 against FireHydrant
Bars are first choices, 0 to 14 each sideModels that argued againstA model can name both, so the two sides of a row do not sum to fourteen.

Across every category in the November 2026 Edition, FireHydrant and Squadcast were named in the same answer twenty times, of the 80 answers naming FireHydrant and the 40 naming Squadcast. In those answers Squadcast took the first choice two times and FireHydrant zero.

Every model, every framing

The eighty-four answers behind the chart above, one cell each: where FireHydrant and Squadcast stood in it.
ModelDirectParaphraseComparativeBudget-constrainedScale-constrainedNegative
Claude Haiku 4.5
GPT-5.4 mini
Gemini 3.5 Flash
Perplexity Sonar
Grok 4.20
Mistral Small
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Llama 4 Maverick
Qwen 3.7 Flash
Kimi K2
GLM 4.7 FlashX
MiniMax M2.5
GPT-6 Luna
Muse Glimmer 30B
FireHydrant Squadcast first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, FireHydrant on the left and Squadcast on the right.

The direct prompt

The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where FireHydrant and Squadcast stood in it.

Neither was the first choice, one was named

9 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.
Claude Haiku 4.5Zenduty alternatives: Freshservice, Jira Service Management, Rootly, Squadcast
GPT-5.4 miniPagerDuty alternatives: FireHydrant, Jira Service Management, Rootly, xMatters
Gemini 3.5 Flashincident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, Jira Service Management, Rootly
Perplexity SonarPagerDuty alternatives: Better Stack, Freshservice, Jira Service Management, Squadcast, incident.io
DeepSeek V4 Flashincident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, PagerDuty, Rootly, Squadcast
Llama 4 Maverickincident.io alternatives: Freshservice, PagerDuty, Squadcast
Kimi K2incident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, PagerDuty, Rootly
MiniMax M2.5incident.io alternatives: FireHydrant, Rootly
Muse Glimmer 30Bincident.io alternatives: All Quiet, FireHydrant, OnPage, PagerDuty, Rootly, SolarWinds IT Incident Response, formerly Squadcast, Zenduty

Neither was named

5 of 14 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.
Grok 4.20Rootly, incident.io alternatives: Freshservice, Jira Service Management, PagerDuty
Mistral Smallincident.io
Qwen 3.7 Flashincident.io alternatives: Opsgenie, PagerDuty
GLM 4.7 FlashXincident.io alternatives: Jira Service Management, PagerDuty, ServiceNow ITSM
GPT-6 Lunaincident.io alternatives: PagerDuty, Rootly

Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment and they are never added together. The figures above are the mid-market standing, which is the one the category orders by.
Small business
Level: the same share of first choices.
FireHydrant2%#7 of 14
Squadcast2%#8 of 14
The full small business standing →
Mid-marketThe figures above
Level: the same share of first choices.
FireHydrant4%#4 of 13
Squadcast4%#5 of 13
The full mid-market standing →
Enterprise
FireHydrant leads by two points.
FireHydrant2%#8 of 12
Squadcast0%#– of 12
The full enterprise standing →

What the models said about FireHydrant

Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of seven in this category shown.

“Pilot any tool with realistic incident creation time, alert routing accuracy and on-call fatigue impact before committing, especially FireHydrant” Muse Glimmer 30B · negative prompt · soft negative
“FireHydrant starts at $9,600/year, making it unsuitable for tight budgets” DeepSeek V4 Flash · budget prompt · soft negative
“some users report it's *too Prescriptive* about incident processes” DeepSeek V4 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“incident.io or FireHydrant are both solid starting points that won't cost you anything until you're ready to pay.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · budget prompt · first choice
“Choose Incident.io / Rootly / FireHydrant if you are an engineering-first culture” Qwen 3.7 Flash · scale prompt · first choice
“Strong automation and Slack integration, but less comprehensive than incident.io for end-to-end management.” Mistral Small · comparative prompt · alternative

What the models said about Squadcast

Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Three of four in this category shown.

“Squadcast offers excellent value if you need more users and advanced features at a low price point.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · budget prompt · first choice
“I recommend Squadcast as the top choice for on-call scheduling and alerting.” Grok 4.20 · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“Good budget option ... Specifically noted for mid-market teams wanting unified SLO tracking” DeepSeek V4 Flash · direct prompt · alternative
Also compared

Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.