# Rootly vs Datadog On-Call: An Incident Management and On-Call comparison for 2026
If your team runs Rootly on top of Datadog, your next Datadog renewal will probably include a conversation about consolidation. Over the past two years, Datadog has added a full incident response suite next to its monitoring: On-Call reached general availability in January 2025, Incident Management and Status Pages sit beside it, and Bits AI SRE became generally available in December 2025. The pitch is simple. You already send Datadog every alert, so why pay a second vendor to run the incident?
It is a fair question, and the answer is not automatically yes. Rootly does things Datadog's incident tools do not, and consolidating changes more than the invoice. This comparison is written for teams weighing that decision, and for anyone choosing between the two from scratch.
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The two start in different places. **Datadog On-Call is the pager inside a monitoring platform**: the alert, the evidence, and the person paged all meet in one product, and incident management, status pages, and an AI SRE are sold as add-on modules beside it. Rootly holds no data of its own. **Rootly is a chat-first incident platform that works with any monitoring vendor**, Datadog included, with workflows, roles, status pages, an AI assistant, and a separately priced AI SRE.
What follows covers the consolidation trade-offs first, then paging, the response, AI, status pages, the data itself, and seat costs for 25 engineers.
## Quick comparison
These are the differences that come up first in a consolidation review.
| Category | Rootly | Datadog On-Call |
|---|---|---|
| **What it is** | Standalone response platform | On-call module of the Datadog platform |
| **Ownership** | Independent | Datadog, public |
| **Holds your telemetry** | ✘ | ✔ |
| **Works with Datadog alerts** | ✔, integration | ✔, native |
| **Works with non-Datadog alerts** | ✔ | ✔ |
| **On-call price** | $20 per user | $20 per seat |
| **Incident response price** | $20 per user | $30 per seat, or $40 bundled with On-Call |
| **Declare from telemetry** | ✘ | ✔ |
| **Lifecycle workflows** | ✔, included | Workflow Automation, billed per execution |
| **Shadow rotations** | ✔ | ✘ |
| **AI SRE** | ✔, priced by quote | ✔, Bits AI SRE on AI Credits |
| **AI assistant** | ✔, Essentials | ✔ |
| **Status pages** | ✔, Essentials | ✔, Incident Response suite |
| **MCP server** | ✔, incidents and configuration | ✔, telemetry and incidents |
| **Free plan** | ✘ | ✘ |
## What consolidating would change
Before comparing features, look at what moves if you drop Rootly for Datadog's incident tools.
You would gain proximity to the data. In Datadog, an engineer can declare an incident from a monitor, a dashboard, or a trace, and that telemetry comes with it. Bits AI SRE investigates using the metrics, logs, and traces Datadog already stores. On-call analytics sit next to service performance data.
You would lose some of Rootly's process depth. Rootly's workflows are included in its seat price and can be edited by engineers, while Datadog's automated runbooks run through Workflow Automation, which is billed separately per execution. Rootly's shadow rotations, coverage warnings, and chat-first incident model have no exact match.
You would also change your exit options. With Rootly, your incident process is independent of your monitoring vendor. With Datadog, the response, the paging, and the telemetry all share one contract, which is convenient until you want to move part of it. Datadog's seat rules matter here too: a seat is claimed when someone joins a schedule, escalation policy, or notification setup, billing follows the month's peak, and overage seats are charged at the higher on-demand rate. Our [FireHydrant vs Datadog On-Call comparison](https://betterstack.com/community/comparisons/firehydrant-vs-datadog-on-call/) walks through those seat rules in more detail.
| Consolidation | Gain | Lose |
|---|---|---|
| **Data** | Incidents declared from telemetry, AI on native data | Nothing |
| **Process** | Built-in incident timeline | Rootly's included workflows and chat-first model |
| **On-call** | One vendor for monitors and pages | Shadow rotations and coverage warnings |
| **Flexibility** | Fewer contracts | An incident process independent of your monitoring vendor |
[summary]
### Incident management without a per-product seat
Consolidating into Datadog means separate seats for paging and incidents on top of usage-based monitoring, and keeping Rootly means a second vendor that holds none of your data. Better Stack includes on-call, incident management, and status pages in one $29 responder price, on the same platform that stores your logs, metrics, and traces.
**One platform for the data and the response is only simpler if it is also one price.** [Explore Better Stack incident management](https://betterstack.com/incident-management).
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## Paging
Both page from Datadog alerts. Each has its own extras.
Any Datadog monitor, or an alert forwarded from another tool, can trigger a Datadog On-Call page. Rotations live in schedules, escalation policies decide who comes next, routing rules pick the team, and tapping a page on the phone leads into the dashboards tied to it. On-call analytics show which services and people carry the heaviest load.
Rootly charges $20 a user for on-call. Alongside schedules, escalation, and overrides, it supports shadow rotations so newer engineers can learn before taking primary duty, warns about coverage gaps, and forwards incoming calls to the current responder. It takes in Datadog alerts through its integration, so switching paging to Rootly does not mean leaving Datadog monitoring.
| Paging | Rootly | Datadog On-Call |
|---|---|---|
| **Pages from Datadog monitors** | ✔, integration | ✔, native |
| **Telemetry on the page** | Linked | ✔, in the mobile app |
| **Shadow rotations** | ✔ | ✘ |
| **Coverage gap warnings** | ✔ | ✘ |
| **On-call analytics** | ✔ | ✔ |
| **Price** | $20 per user | $20 per seat |
[summary]
### On-call with the evidence one tap away
Datadog puts telemetry on the page but charges per product seat, and Rootly adds rotation features but links out for the data. Better Stack's on-call pages from its own monitors and log alerts with unlimited phone calls and SMS, and the responder lands on the logs and metrics behind the alert.
**A page that opens on the failing graph saves the first five minutes of every incident.** [Explore Better Stack on-call](https://betterstack.com/incident-management).
[/summary]
## Running the incident
Rootly is the deeper response tool. Datadog keeps the response next to the evidence.
Rootly runs each incident in its own Slack or Teams channel with roles, a timeline, and prompts for the incident lead. Workflows react to severity and status changes, paging extra responders, filing tickets, and refreshing the status page, all without an execution fee. The catalog points incidents at the owning team.
In Datadog, starting an incident from a graph, a monitor, or a page pulls that context straight in. Activity is logged automatically, people can work from Slack or Teams, generated summaries keep the channel current, and the catalog maps which neighboring services are affected. Automated runbooks come from Workflow Automation, billed per execution.
| Running the incident | Rootly | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| **Declare from telemetry** | ✘ | ✔ |
| **Chat-first incident channel** | ✔ | ✔, Slack and Teams apps |
| **Roles and prompts for the lead** | ✔ | ✔ |
| **Automation** | Workflows, included | Workflow Automation, per execution |
| **Service catalog** | ✔ | ✔, Software Catalog |
| **Evidence in the same tool** | ✘ | ✔ |
## Two AI SREs
Both vendors sell an AI SRE separately from their base plans, and both look in different places for answers.
### Datadog: Bits AI SRE on your telemetry
Bits AI SRE looks across the signals Datadog already holds, plus recent changes, and suggests what caused an alert. Its usage now draws on AI Credits, a pool Datadog introduced in 2026 that also funds chat, code fixes, and custom agents. A committed block of 500 credits runs $500 a month, unplanned usage costs $1.30 per credit, and Datadog puts a typical investigation at roughly 6.5 credits. How it compares with ours is covered in [Better Stack AI SRE vs Datadog Bits AI SRE](https://betterstack.com/community/comparisons/better-stack-ai-sre-vs-datadog-bits-ai-sre/).
### Rootly: AI SRE on incident context
Rootly's AI SRE, priced by quote, digs into recent releases, nearby alerts, and comparable past outages, then suggests a cause and how confident it is. It sees telemetry through integrations, including Datadog's, rather than reading it at the source. Its Essentials plan adds a lighter assistant for summaries and retrospective drafts. That agent gets a fuller treatment in [Better Stack AI SRE vs Rootly AI SRE](https://betterstack.com/community/comparisons/better-stack-ai-sre-vs-rootly-ai-sre/).
Both offer MCP servers. Rootly's gives assistants read and write access to incident records and configuration, while Datadog's lets them search telemetry and incidents.
| AI and MCP | Rootly | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| **Reads raw telemetry** | ✘, via integrations | ✔ |
| **Uses incident history and deploys** | ✔ | ✔, change data |
| **Confidence scores** | ✔ | Not advertised |
| **Pricing** | Quote | AI Credits, about 6.5 per investigation |
| **Incident summaries** | ✔ | ✔ |
| **MCP server** | ✔, incidents and configuration | ✔, telemetry and incidents |
[summary]
### An AI SRE without a credit meter
Bits reads the telemetry but spends credits each time it runs, and Rootly's AI SRE is quoted separately and reads telemetry only through integrations. Better Stack's AI SRE sits on its own log, metric, and trace store, so there is no meter to watch when you run it.
**An AI investigation is worth the most when nobody hesitates to run one.** [See Better Stack AI SRE](https://betterstack.com/ai-sre).
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## Status pages and retrospectives
Both now include status pages. Rootly's are part of Essentials and can be updated automatically by incident workflows.
Datadog's status pages belong to its Incident Response bundle. You publish components, outages, and planned maintenance, readers subscribe by email or Slack, and one public notice can summarize several internal incidents at once.
For retrospectives, Rootly's AI drafts a review from the channel history and files follow-ups in your tracker. Datadog's postmortems start from the recorded timeline and already include the relevant charts and log excerpts.
| Status and review | Rootly | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| **Public status pages** | ✔ | ✔ |
| **Subscriber notifications** | ✔ | ✔, email and Slack |
| **Retrospectives** | ✔, AI-drafted from chat | ✔, postmortems from the timeline |
| **Telemetry in the review** | Linked | ✔, embedded |
## The telemetry question
Datadog wins this outright. It covers infrastructure, APM, logs, real user monitoring, synthetics, and security, and keeping incidents beside that data is why Bits can read it directly. Rootly stores none of it and works through integrations, most often with Datadog itself.
What holds teams back is the bill. Datadog meters hosts, ingested gigabytes, indexed events, and custom metrics separately, and anything beyond your commitment costs around 50% more. For many teams, that bill is the reason they started looking around, and consolidating incidents into Datadog makes the monitoring contract harder to change later. Teams in that position often evaluate a combined alternative, which our [Better Stack vs Datadog comparison](https://betterstack.com/community/comparisons/better-stack-vs-datadog/) lays out.
| Observability | Rootly | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| **Metrics, logs, traces** | ✘ | ✔ |
| **RUM, synthetics, security** | ✘ | ✔ |
| **Same contract as incidents** | ✘ | ✔ |
| **Pricing model** | Not applicable | Per host, GB, event, and metric |
[summary]
### Fast queries without a usage surprise
Datadog meters every signal it stores beside your incidents, and Rootly stores none. Better Stack stores logs, metrics, and traces in one warehouse you query with SQL, with Query Boost keeping searches fast at volume, and runs incidents on the same data.
**Keeping the evidence close only helps if keeping it is affordable.** [See Better Stack dashboards](https://betterstack.com/dashboards).
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## What a 25-person team pays
Rootly charges $20 a user for incident response and $20 for on-call, with its AI SRE by quote. Datadog charges $20 per On-Call seat, $30 per Incident Management seat, or $40 for both together on annual billing, with Bits on AI Credits and Workflow Automation billed separately.
For 25 engineers with 10 on call, at annual list prices and excluding the observability bill:
| Cost component | Rootly Essentials | Datadog, separate products | Datadog bundle |
|---|---|---|---|
| **If all 25 take part** | 25 at $20 plus 10 at $20, so $700 | 25 at $30 plus 10 at $20, so $950 | 25 at $40, so $1,000 |
| **If only the 10 on call take part** | 10 at $20 plus 10 at $20, so $400 | 10 at $30 plus 10 at $20, so $500 | 10 at $40, so $400 |
| **Workflow automation** | Included | Per execution | Per execution |
| **AI SRE** | Quote | AI Credits | AI Credits |
| **Status pages** | Included | Part of Incident Response | Part of Incident Response |
On seat prices alone, Rootly costs the same or less, and its workflows carry no execution charge. Consolidating into Datadog does not save money on incident seats. Its case rests on the convenience of one vendor and an AI that reads your data directly.
## Which one fits your team
Choose Datadog's incident tools if Datadog is a long-term choice for your monitoring, your engineers investigate from dashboards, and you want an AI SRE that reads telemetry at the source. Watch seat counts, the on-demand rate, AI Credit usage, and Workflow Automation charges.
Keep or choose Rootly if you want response decoupled from monitoring, or if your incidents call for a more structured process than Datadog offers. Its workflows, shadow rotations, and chat-first model work with Datadog alerts or anyone else's. If you are weighing chat-first options more broadly, the [incident.io vs Rootly comparison](https://betterstack.com/community/comparisons/incident-io-vs-rootly/) is a good next read.
## Final thoughts
Consolidation is the real decision here, not features. **Datadog is at its best when one vendor owns both the data and the pager**, and Bits AI SRE is the clearest example of why.
But consolidating does not save money on incident seats, and it ties your response process to your monitoring contract. If Datadog is the vendor you plan to keep for a decade, that is a fine trade. **Moving incidents into Datadog while trying to shrink the Datadog bill pulls in two directions at once.**
[summary]
### One MCP endpoint for incidents and telemetry
Rootly's MCP server reaches incidents but no telemetry, and Datadog's spans telemetry billed across many separate products. Better Stack's MCP server sits over one platform, so Claude or Cursor can query your logs with SQL, check who is on call, acknowledge an incident, and build a dashboard chart in one conversation.
**With incidents and telemetry behind one MCP endpoint, your assistant can investigate and respond without switching tools.** [Try Better Stack](https://betterstack.com).
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