AI overview
Grafana OnCall OSS is archived, and the maintained route is Grafana Cloud IRM, billed per user. You do not have to leave Grafana. Keep it for dashboards and alerting, point alerts at Pagerly through the native Grafana or Alertmanager integration, and run schedules, paging and incidents inside Slack, billed per team with unlimited users.
At a glance
| Pagerly | Grafana OnCall | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Actively developed | OSS archived, Cloud IRM maintained |
| Where your team works | Inside Slack and Microsoft Teams | Grafana UI, with a Slack integration |
| Pricing model | Per team, unlimited users | Per user on Cloud IRM, free but unsupported on OSS |
| Typical cost, 30 engineers | $39 + $120 paging = $159 / month | About $600 / month on Cloud IRM (approximate) |
| Migration path | Recreate rotations, keep Grafana alerting | Move to Cloud IRM or self-host an archived codebase |
| Setup time | Minutes | Hours on Cloud IRM, plus infrastructure on OSS |
Feature comparison
| Capability | Pagerly | Grafana OnCall |
|---|---|---|
| On-call scheduling | ||
| Rotations and escalation policies | Yes | Yes |
| Overrides and shift swaps from SlackGrafana supports overrides and a Slack integration, but swaps are not a Slack-first flow | Yes | Partial |
| Slack @oncall user group kept in sync automaticallyGrafana can notify a Slack user group in an escalation step but does not update its members as shifts change | Yes | No |
| Channel topic shows who is on call | Yes | No |
| Alerting and paging | ||
| Phone, SMS and push pagingIncluded in Cloud IRM. The cloud connection that delivered them for OSS installs was turned off | Yes | Partial |
| Native Grafana and Prometheus Alertmanager integration | Yes | Yes |
| Dashboards and alert rule authoringThis is Grafana's strength, and the reason to keep it in your stack | No | Yes |
| Datadog, Sentry, AWS and 50+ alert sources | Yes | Yes |
| Incident response | ||
| Incident channels, roles and timeline in SlackCloud IRM can declare incidents from Slack, but the workflow centres on the Grafana UI | Yes | Partial |
| AI SRE agent that investigates and proposes a fixGrafana's AI assistant helps explore telemetry. Verify current capabilities on grafana.com | Yes | Partial |
| AI-written post-mortemsCloud IRM keeps an incident timeline to write from. Verify AI drafting on grafana.com | Yes | Partial |
| Public status page | Yes | No |
| Platform | ||
| Jira, Linear and Asana ticket sync | Yes | Partial |
| REST API, MCP server and Terraform | Yes | Yes |
| Actively maintained on-call product | Yes | Cloud IRM yes, OSS archived |
| Flat per-team pricing with unlimited users | Yes | No |
Pricing
Pagerly
Per team, unlimited users
| Basic | $19 / team / month |
|---|---|
| Starter | $39 / team / month |
| Phone & SMS paging | $4 / user / month, optional |
| Enterprise | Custom |
Grafana OnCall
Per user
| OSS | Free, archivedNo longer maintained, and you host it yourself |
|---|---|
| Grafana Cloud Free | Free, with limitsCapped usage and users. Approximate, verify on grafana.com |
| Grafana Cloud IRM | ~$20 / user / monthApproximate, verify on grafana.com |
| Enterprise | CustomQuoted by Grafana Labs |
Published list prices, approximate. Verify on the vendor's site.
Cost calculator
Savings calculator
What would Grafana OnCall cost your team?
Grafana OnCall lists at about $20/user/month, per seat. Pagerly is $39 per team plus $4 per user for paging - same workflows, inside Slack.
That's not a discount - that's how much extra teams pay for the same workflows. Pagerly's side uses published pricing: $39 per team per month on Starter, plus $4 per user per month for paging by call. Grafana Cloud IRM is billed per active user, roughly $20 per user per month at the time of writing. This is approximate, so verify on grafana.com. Pagerly's side uses Starter at $39 per team plus $4 per user for phone paging.
Why Grafana OnCall users need an alternative now
Grafana OnCall OSS entered maintenance mode in 2025 and has since been archived. The cloud connection that delivered SMS, phone and push notifications for self-hosted installs was turned off, so an unmaintained pager is now one you cannot fully trust. Grafana points users to Grafana Cloud IRM, which is maintained and billed per user.
That leaves a decision, not a deadline-driven scramble: pay per seat to stay inside Grafana, or move only the on-call layer somewhere built for it. The second option lets you keep everything you like about Grafana.
What teams hit when leaving Grafana OnCall
- An archived codebase in the paging path. No security fixes and no support for something that wakes people up at 3 a.m.
- Self-hosting overhead. Running and patching OnCall OSS is infrastructure work most teams would rather not own.
- The maintained path is per user. Cloud IRM cost grows every time an engineer joins the rotation.
- Slack is a notification channel, not the workflow. Responders still end up in the Grafana UI to manage the incident.
@oncallstays manual. Someone edits the Slack user group at every handover.
How to migrate from Grafana OnCall to Pagerly
- Add Pagerly to Slack. One OAuth click, no infrastructure.
- Recreate your rotations. There is no Grafana OnCall importer, so rebuild schedules and escalation steps in Slack. Most teams have a handful.
- Connect Grafana. Use the native Grafana or Prometheus Alertmanager integration. Your dashboards and alert rules stay exactly where they are.
- Turn on paging and the user group. Enable phone and SMS for the people who carry the pager, and let Pagerly keep
@oncallcurrent. - Switch OnCall off. Run both for a week, then decommission the old instance once paging is verified.
When Grafana OnCall is the better choice
Be honest about the fit:
- You are all-in on Grafana Cloud. If dashboards, alerting, logs and on-call already live there, Cloud IRM keeps one platform and one login.
- You have a self-hosting mandate. If policy requires running everything on your own infrastructure, a managed Slack-based tool will not satisfy it.
- You want a single vendor. One contract and one support channel across observability and on-call is a legitimate reason to stay.
If none of those apply, you are paying per seat for a workflow your team does not open.
Which should you choose?
| If you are… | Choose |
|---|---|
| Self-hosting archived OnCall OSS | Pagerly - managed, nothing to patch |
| Slack-first and want to keep Grafana for alerting | Pagerly - native Grafana integration |
| Fully committed to the Grafana Cloud stack | Grafana Cloud IRM |
| Growing headcount and tired of per-seat bills | Pagerly - $39 per team, unlimited users |
| Running incidents, not just alerts | Pagerly - roles, AI investigation and post-mortems in Slack |
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana OnCall still supported?
Only the paid Grafana Cloud IRM is. The open-source Grafana OnCall repository entered maintenance mode in 2025 and has since been archived, and the cloud connection it used for SMS, phone and push notifications was turned off.
Do I have to stop using Grafana to use Pagerly?
No. Keep Grafana for dashboards and alert rules. Pagerly has native Grafana and Prometheus Alertmanager integrations, so alerts fire in Grafana and page the right person from Pagerly.
How is Pagerly different from Grafana Cloud IRM?
Pagerly runs on-call, paging and incidents inside Slack, keeps a Slack @oncall user group in sync, adds an AI SRE agent and AI post-mortems, and is billed per team instead of per user. Cloud IRM sits inside the wider Grafana platform, which is its advantage if you want everything there.
Can Pagerly import my Grafana OnCall schedules?
Not today. Pagerly imports PagerDuty and Opsgenie schedules directly, but Grafana OnCall rotations are recreated by hand in Slack. For most teams that is a short job, and you can run both tools side by side until paging is verified.
How much does Pagerly cost compared with Grafana Cloud IRM?
Basic is $19 per team per month and Starter is $39, with unlimited users and incidents. Phone and SMS paging is an optional $4 per user per month. A 30-engineer team pays about $159 per month, against roughly $600 at an approximate $20 per user.
Do I need to self-host anything?
No. Pagerly is fully managed, so there is no server to patch, which is the main cost of staying on the archived OnCall OSS.
Does Pagerly have an API, MCP server and Terraform provider?
Yes. Pagerly has a REST API, an MCP server for AI clients, and a Terraform provider, so schedules and escalations can be managed as code like the rest of a Grafana-based stack.
Updated 16 October 2026