# Pagerless vs Rootly

> An honest side-by-side, with sources. Where Rootly is the better fit, we say so.

URL: https://pagerless.dev/vs/rootly
Updated: 2026-10-22

Rootly is a Slack-native incident response and on-call platform, sold as separate per-user products. It is built for engineering and SRE teams at startups to enterprises. Pagerless is on-call for people who build apps, often with AI: it decides whether a problem should wake you, explains what broke in plain words, and gets the fix ready for one tap.

## Side by side

| Feature | Pagerless | Rootly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free plan | You + 1 backup, 3 apps, no card | No free plan; a trial, and a startup program with discounts |
| Paid | Team planned: per alert sent, no per-seat price (not open yet) | On-Call: $20 per user per month (billing basis not stated) |
| Phone and SMS | Phone calls through your own Twilio at Twilio's price; no SMS | Push, phone, SMS, email, Slack and Teams; per-plan limits not stated |
| Schedules and rotations | No: an escalation order (you, then your backup) | Yes |

## What Pagerless does differently

- **Decides how loud to be.** Wake, tell or log for every problem; four floors (app silent, crash loop, 5xx burst, payments failing) always wake someone, and an unsure decision is never quieter than tell.
- **Explains what broke.** Every problem gets a plain-words diagnosis from the scrubbed samples and recent deploys.
- **Gets the fix ready.** Undo the update, restart or add capacity on 20+ hosts with one tap and Face ID.
- **Sets up in one command.** `npx pagerless connect` finds services, jobs and AWS alarms in your repo.

## Choose Rootly if

- You run structured incidents in Slack with retrospectives and roles.
- You want a mature on-call product with schedules for a larger team.

## Choose Pagerless if

- You want a free plan for you and a backup.
- You want the alert itself to explain what broke and offer the fix.

## Moving from Rootly to Pagerless

1. **Step 1** Run `npx pagerless connect`.
2. **Step 2** Route the alerts that page you to Pagerless.
3. **Step 3** Keep Rootly for incident process if you use it.

## Questions

### Is Pagerless a good Rootly alternative?

For one person or a small team that wants to be woken only when it matters, yes: it is free for you and a backup, calls through your own Twilio and offers one-tap undo. For large teams that need rotations and schedules, Rootly fits better today.

### Does Pagerless have on-call schedules?

Not yet. Each app has an escalation order: you first, then your backup after 5 minutes without an answer.

### How current is this comparison?

Every Rootly fact on this page comes from the sources below, checked on October 22, 2026. Prices change; check their page before deciding.

Sources:
1. [Rootly pricing](https://rootly.com/pricing)
2. [Rootly on-call notifications](https://docs.rootly.com/on-call/on-call-notifications)