Two Different Philosophies
Grafana OnCall is an open-source on-call management tool built by Grafana Labs. It handles on-call scheduling, escalation policies, and multi-channel alerting -- and the core product is genuinely free. If you already use Grafana for dashboards and observability, OnCall slots into your stack with zero friction. It is one of the best free tools in the on-call space, and that is not an exaggeration.
Alert24 takes a different approach. Instead of being one piece of an observability stack, it bundles uptime monitoring, on-call scheduling and escalation, multi-channel alerting, and public status pages into a single platform. You do not need to run Grafana, Prometheus, or any other infrastructure to get started.
This post is an honest comparison. For many teams, Grafana OnCall is the right choice -- especially if it is already part of your workflow. Alert24 is the right choice for teams that want monitoring, alerting, and status pages without adopting the Grafana ecosystem. The answer depends on what you already run and what you actually need.
Pricing: Hard to Beat Free
Let's be direct: Grafana OnCall's pricing is its biggest advantage.
| Option | Cost |
|---|---|
| Grafana OnCall OSS (self-hosted) | Free (you manage the infrastructure) |
| Grafana Cloud Free tier | Free (limited alerts and users) |
| Grafana Cloud Pro | $0/month for OnCall add-on (included with Grafana Cloud Pro at $29/user/month for metrics, logs, etc.) |
Alert24 uses unit-based pricing. Each unit costs $18/month and includes 15 monitoring checks, a status page, and a team member. A free tier is available with 5 monitors and 1 team member.
For a 5-person team, Alert24 costs $90/month. For a 10-person team, $180/month. Grafana OnCall itself is free on any plan.
The honest take: If on-call alerting is all you need and you already have monitoring covered, Grafana OnCall's free tier is unbeatable. You cannot compete with free, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The cost comparison shifts if you need monitoring and status pages too. Grafana OnCall does not monitor your services or host a status page. To get a comparable stack, you would need:
| Tool | Cost (typical) |
|---|---|
| Grafana OnCall | Free |
| Monitoring tool (UptimeRobot, Pingdom, etc.) | $30-60/mo |
| Status page (Atlassian Statuspage, Instatus, etc.) | $29-79/mo |
| Total | $59-139/mo |
A 5-person team on Alert24 pays $90/month for all three. But if you already have monitoring through Grafana Cloud or Prometheus, those extra costs do not apply to you and Grafana OnCall remains the cheaper option.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Alert24 | Grafana OnCall |
|---|---|---|
| On-call scheduling | Rotations, overrides, vacation coverage | Rotations, overrides, shift swaps, web calendar |
| Escalation policies | Multi-tier with configurable timeouts | Multi-tier with configurable steps and wait times |
| Multi-channel alerting | Email, SMS, voice, Slack/Teams/Google Chat (notifications + acknowledge/resolve) | Email, SMS, phone, Slack, Telegram, mobile push |
| Uptime monitoring | Built-in: HTTP, DNS, SSL, TCP checks | Not included -- relies on Grafana Alerting or external tools |
| Third-party dependency monitoring | 2,000+ services tracked with AI-powered parsing | Not included |
| Status pages | Built-in, auto-updating from monitoring data | Not included |
| Grafana integration | No native integration | Deep native integration -- alerts, dashboards, labels |
| Open source | No | Yes -- fully open-source option available |
| Native mobile app | PWA with push notifications | Yes -- native iOS and Android apps |
| ChatOps | Slack/Teams/Google Chat notifications + acknowledge/resolve (no auto-channels or in-chat commands) | Interactive Slack and Telegram bots (ack, resolve, escalate from chat) |
| Alert grouping | Basic grouping by service | Grouping by labels, routes, and alert templates |
| Maintenance windows | Yes, with status page integration | Yes |
| SSO / SAML | Google OAuth, MFA (SAML on Enterprise plan) | Available via Grafana Cloud identity management |
| Post-incident reviews | Built-in with action items and metrics | Not built-in (use Grafana Incident for this) |
| SLA tracking | Built-in with breach alerts | Not built-in |
| Pricing model | $18/unit/month (flat, usage-based) | Free (OSS or Cloud Free), or included with Grafana Cloud paid plans |
Where Grafana OnCall Wins
It is free. The open-source version is free to self-host, and the Grafana Cloud free tier gives you OnCall with no credit card. For teams on a tight budget, this is the single most important factor. Alert24's free tier includes 5 monitors and 1 team member, but the paid plans start at $18/month. Grafana OnCall's core on-call functionality costs nothing.
Deep Grafana ecosystem integration. If your team already uses Grafana for dashboards and Grafana Alerting for alert rules, OnCall is the natural extension. Alerts flow directly from Grafana Alerting into OnCall with full label context, dashboard links, and runbook URLs attached. There is no configuration glue or webhook plumbing -- it just works. Alert24 has no Grafana integration.
Open source. Grafana OnCall is fully open source under the AGPLv3 license. You can inspect the code, contribute features, and run it on your own infrastructure with full control. If vendor lock-in or data sovereignty is a concern, self-hosting OnCall eliminates both. Alert24 is a managed SaaS platform with no self-hosted option.
Native mobile app. Grafana OnCall has dedicated iOS and Android apps for managing on-call schedules and responding to incidents on the go. Alert24 offers a progressive web app with push notifications plus SMS and voice calls, but there is no native app store download.
Deeper ChatOps workflows. Grafana OnCall's Slack and Telegram integrations let you acknowledge, resolve, and escalate alerts directly from chat with full interactive commands. Alert24 sends incident notifications to Slack, Teams, and Google Chat, and users can acknowledge and resolve incidents directly from the notification. However, Alert24 does not offer full Slack-native workflows like auto-created incident channels, in-chat role assignment, or in-chat workflow commands.
Part of a broader observability stack. Grafana Cloud includes metrics (Mimir), logs (Loki), traces (Tempo), profiling, and OnCall. If you want a unified observability platform, Grafana's ecosystem is comprehensive and well-integrated. Alert24 focuses on monitoring, alerting, and status pages -- it is not an observability platform.
Strong community. Grafana has a large, active community with extensive documentation, community forums, and thousands of tutorials. If you hit a problem, someone has probably written about it.
Where Alert24 Wins
Built-in monitoring. Alert24 includes HTTP, DNS, SSL, and TCP monitoring out of the box. When a check fails, it creates an incident and triggers escalation automatically -- no separate tool required. Grafana OnCall does not monitor your services. It receives alerts from Grafana Alerting, Prometheus, or other monitoring tools. If you do not already have monitoring infrastructure, you need to set it up before OnCall is useful.
Third-party dependency monitoring. Alert24 monitors 2,000+ third-party service status pages -- AWS, Stripe, Cloudflare, GitHub, and more -- and alerts you when a dependency has issues. If your production problem is actually a Stripe outage, Alert24 tells you before your team spends 30 minutes debugging your own code. Grafana OnCall does not offer this.
Auto-updating status pages. Alert24 includes public status pages that update automatically when monitoring detects an issue. Your customers know something is wrong without anyone manually posting an update. Grafana OnCall does not include status pages. If you need one, you need a separate tool and a separate workflow to keep it updated during incidents.
No infrastructure to manage. Alert24 is a managed SaaS platform. Sign up, configure monitors, and you are done. Grafana OnCall OSS requires you to run and maintain Grafana, a database, Redis, Celery workers, and the OnCall engine itself. Grafana Cloud eliminates this, but then you are adopting the broader Grafana Cloud platform -- which may be more than you need if you just want uptime monitoring and on-call alerting.
Simpler setup for non-Grafana teams. If your team does not use Grafana, adopting OnCall means adopting Grafana. That is a meaningful commitment -- learning Grafana's alerting model, configuring data sources, writing PromQL or LogQL queries. Alert24 requires no prior infrastructure. Configure a URL to monitor, set up a schedule, and alerts start flowing.
Post-incident reviews and SLA tracking. Alert24 includes post-incident review workflows with action items and metrics, plus SLA tracking with breach alerts, on all paid plans. Grafana OnCall focuses on the alerting workflow -- for post-incident features, you would use Grafana Incident (a separate product) or a third-party tool.
Who Should Choose Grafana OnCall
- Teams already using Grafana. If Grafana is your dashboarding and alerting platform, OnCall is the obvious choice. The integration is seamless and the cost is zero.
- Budget-constrained teams that already have monitoring. If you have Prometheus, Datadog, or another monitoring tool and just need on-call alerting, Grafana OnCall is free and capable.
- Teams that value open source. If self-hosting, code transparency, or avoiding vendor lock-in are priorities, OnCall's open-source model is a genuine advantage.
- Platform engineering teams building an observability stack. If you are investing in Grafana Cloud for metrics, logs, and traces, adding OnCall completes the stack with no additional cost.
- Teams with strong DevOps capabilities. If your team is comfortable running and maintaining Grafana infrastructure, the self-hosted option gives you full control at zero licensing cost.
Who Should Choose Alert24
- Teams that do not use Grafana and do not want to. If adopting an entire observability platform just to get on-call alerting feels like overkill, Alert24 gives you monitoring and alerting without the Grafana commitment.
- Teams replacing a multi-tool stack. If you are currently paying for a monitoring tool plus an alerting tool plus a status page tool, Alert24 consolidates all three into one platform at a lower total cost.
- Teams that need status pages. If customer-facing status pages are a requirement, Alert24 includes them with auto-updating from monitoring data. Grafana OnCall does not offer status pages at all.
- Non-technical teams or small teams without DevOps. If setting up Grafana, Prometheus, and OnCall feels like too much infrastructure work, Alert24's managed platform is significantly simpler to get running.
- Teams that value dependency monitoring. If knowing that AWS or Stripe is down before your team starts debugging would save real time, Alert24's third-party monitoring is a differentiator.
The Honest Assessment
Grafana OnCall is an excellent product. If you already use Grafana for dashboards and alerting, adding OnCall is a no-brainer -- it is free, deeply integrated, and well-maintained. There is no reason to switch to Alert24 or anything else. The Grafana ecosystem is one of the best in observability, and OnCall is a natural part of it.
Alert24 exists for teams that do not live in the Grafana world. If you need uptime monitoring, on-call alerting, and a public status page -- and you do not want to adopt Grafana, Prometheus, and the broader observability stack to get there -- Alert24 bundles all three into a single platform. You trade the flexibility and depth of the Grafana ecosystem for simplicity and a unified workflow.
The question is straightforward: Do you already use Grafana? If yes, use Grafana OnCall. If no, and you need monitoring plus alerting plus status pages, Alert24 is worth evaluating.
Want to see if Alert24 fits your team? Start a free trial -- no credit card required. Set up monitoring, on-call scheduling, and a status page in under 10 minutes.