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Sources checked 2026-09-11 · review cycle 30 days

MonoDuty vs Rootly

The decision is often about how much of the responder's working life the product should organize. Rootly's published on-call scope includes coverage and holiday workflows; MonoDuty documents schedules, overrides and focused incident alerting. Turn your difficult rota cases into the trial.

Source review by oncall.fyi editorial team. Publication approved by Burak. Fit guidance is an editorial judgment; delivery reliability has not been independently benchmarked.

Make the decision around your team’s work

Holiday cover is the recurring failure

Model a real absence, shadow rotation and last-minute substitution. Check who can request cover, who authorizes the change, and which person receives the resulting page. A manual override can satisfy one team's process while another needs a coordinated request workflow.

Incident response is a second requirement

Rootly lists On-Call and Incident Response separately. Verify the bundle needed for chat coordination, retrospective work and administration. MonoDuty's one-way Slack updates should not be represented as equivalent to operating the incident inside chat.

Choose based on the exception cases

Straightforward weekly rotations can look similar in a demo. The useful differentiators appear when a responder becomes unavailable, a coverage gap occurs or a policy reaches its end. Record those outcomes before judging either product by interface preference.

Published scope and cost differences

Facts below link to the provider’s own source. Product names, plan entitlements and pricing can change; check the final quote against your requirements.

MonoDuty

Focused monitoring, incident alerting and on-call ownership.

Paid entry
Pro: $9/user/month, up to 25 users. Business: $19/user/month. Paid subscriptions are sales-assisted. Source
Free scope
One user; email notifications; 50 incidents/month and 7-day history. Source
Delivery and limits
Pro includes 500 SMS and 200 voice notifications/month; Business 2,000 SMS and 500 voice. Confirm destinations and channel availability. Source
Schedules
Team schedules with time zones, rotation layers and temporary overrides. Custom escalation policies require Pro or Business; repeated execution is not implemented. Source
Response workflow
Incident acknowledgment and resolution are documented. Slack updates are one-way; responders act in MonoDuty or supported response paths. Source
Monitoring
HTTP/HTTPS checks run from Helsinki. This is a single-location monitoring worker. Source

Ask during the trial: Require a real missed-acknowledgment test, quota checks and an exit export. Do not assume mobile push, chat-side response actions or repeating escalation loops.

Public sources checked 2026-09-11. No independent reliability benchmark.

Rootly

Separate on-call and incident-response offerings with workflow and coverage features.

Paid entry
On-Call Essentials and Incident Response Essentials each list $20/user/month. Enterprise and AI SRE require contact. Source
Schedules
On-Call Essentials lists shadow rotations, holiday calendars, PTO, overrides, coverage requests and gap detection. Source
Response workflow
Incident Response Essentials lists Slack response, retrospectives, a status page and metrics. Source
Cost checks
Confirm billing period, the combination of products, communication allowances and enterprise requirements. Source

Ask during the trial: Clarify whether you need On-Call, Incident Response or both. Do not read two separately listed $20 products as a $20 combined bundle.

Public sources checked 2026-09-11. No independent reliability benchmark.

What to prove in the trial

  1. Arrange a controlled holiday-cover change and verify the schedule's resolved recipient.
  2. Test a gap or unavailable primary, including the final fallback.
  3. Run required chat and retrospective actions and record which product license enables each.
  4. Export the resulting schedule and incident evidence with a complete bundle quote.

Use synthetic events and agreed test recipients. Keep the current paging route active while you gather evidence, then rehearse rollback before cutover.

Build the paging test checklist →

Build your provider shortlist

Choose up to three. Filters show documented workflow scope, sometimes on higher plans. An omitted match means this inventory has not established the requirement. Your choices, prices and evidence stay in this browser; save a dated result below.

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Compare the cost of the scope you need

All values are USD. These are editable planning estimates. A base price does not prove feature parity. Blank extra costs remain unknown; taxes, negotiated discounts and migration effort are excluded. Twelve-month totals are a projection, not an annual contract quote.

MonoDuty

Published monthly rate; confirm order terms. Source checked 2026-09-11.

5,000 incidents/month, 30-day history, 10 custom policies; SMS/voice quotas apply.

$45.00 / month

$540.00 projected over 12 months

Base estimate only. Required extras are not confirmed.

Record trial evidence (0/6)

Record a test date and observed result for each requirement. Text being present is not independent validation. Use roles and synthetic incident IDs.

Rootly

Published monthly unit; confirm billing term. Source checked 2026-09-11.

Incident Response is separately listed; confirm bundle and communication terms.

$100.00 / month

$1,200.00 projected over 12 months

Base estimate only. Required extras are not confirmed.

Record trial evidence (0/6)

Record a test date and observed result for each requirement. Text being present is not independent validation. Use roles and synthetic incident IDs.

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