Comparison
CallHeim vs PagerDuty.
CallHeim handles on-call alerting and escalation on published, rule-based thresholds, with a single list price per seat and every limit stated beside the feature it applies to — a modern PagerDuty alternative for a team that wants to read exactly how its alerts are handled. Below is how the two platforms compare on pricing, alert handling, incident response and migration, each claim dated and sourced.
Competitor information last verified September 2026. Sources are linked beside each fact.
Why teams evaluate CallHeim
What CallHeim does differently.
- 01
Rule-based alert handling, published, on every plan
The thresholds behind the noise handling are published: a 300-second dedup window, a flap threshold of 4 state changes in 600 seconds, and title-similarity grouping at a default of 0.6.
Four documented alert-grouping methods (Intelligent, Alert Content, Intelligent+Content, Time-only), three of them rule-based and configurable; grouping of any kind requires the AIOps add-on. (PagerDuty alert grouping documentation, checked 2026-09-24) The AIOps add-on starts at $699/mo on an annual plan ($799/mo billed monthly), priced per accepted event, and needs at least one Professional or Business seat. (PagerDuty AIOps pricing page, checked 2026-09-24)
The thresholds are CallHeim’s defaults, not tenant-tunable, and no noise-reduction percentage is published.
- 02
No incident data to an external LLM
No incident data is sent to any external LLM. CallHeim’s AI features are rule-based code running in our own AWS account, and CallHeim does not train any model on your incidents. An optional Amazon Bedrock path exists in the code and is switched off.
CallHeim ships no generative assistant and no autonomous agents. That is a deliberate choice. Page content still reaches the delivery provider: Resend for e-mail.
- 03
A severity suggestion, not a decision
CallHeim suggests a severity from a fixed keyword ruleset plus your own resolved incidents, shows the matched terms, and a person applies it. Suggestions never change severity or page anyone.
- 04
An append-only audit log with a retention-locked daily copy
The audit log is append-only: no client can modify or delete an entry. Audit records are copied daily to an S3 Object Lock archive (governance mode) with a 7-year retention lock, held by CallHeim.
No hash chain or signing, and the export is CallHeim-operator only.
- 05
A list price with no separate add-on for noise handling or analytics
Starter $9, Pro $15 and Business $29 per user per month. Enterprise is negotiated. Paid plans are activated directly by the CallHeim team.
The AIOps add-on starts at $699/mo on an annual plan ($799/mo billed monthly), priced per accepted event, and needs at least one Professional or Business seat. (PagerDuty AIOps pricing page, checked 2026-09-24) Advance for Incident Management starts at $415/mo; Status Pages overage starts at $89 per 1,000 subscribers/mo. (PagerDuty pricing page, checked 2026-09-24)
Core analytics (MTTA, MTTR, alert volume by source, escalation rate and period-over-period comparison, over windows of 7 to 365 days) are not gated by plan; related-incident and responder insights start at Pro.
Product screenshots
What the console looks like.
Tiers, per-tier timeouts and a mandatory fallback (example data).
Rotation layers and the final schedule they produce. Coverage gaps are shown in the console; they are not alerted in advance. (example data).
How it works
How CallHeim handles an alert.
Six steps from the moment an alert arrives to the moment escalation stops. Every step below is built and covered by automated tests.
- 01
Alert arrives
Send alerts to your CallHeim integration URL over HTTPS, in CallHeim’s alert format or through a field mapping you define. CallHeim queues each accepted alert durably and processes it asynchronously; acceptance is an HTTP 202.
- 02
Duplicates collapse
An accepted alert is normalised to one record with five severity levels (P1 to P5) and a stable fingerprint. Repeats of the same alert collapse onto one incident while they keep arriving within five minutes of each other.
- 03
Severity suggested
CallHeim suggests a severity from a fixed keyword ruleset plus your own resolved incidents, shows the matched terms, and a person applies it. Suggestions never change severity or page anyone.
- 04
Escalation runs
Escalation runs on an AWS Step Functions state machine: an unanswered tier times out and advances to the next tier or the fallback. Escalation policies have up to 8 tiers, per-tier timeouts from 1 to 240 minutes, and a mandatory fallback target.
- 05
Paged by e-mail
E-mail paging is live in early access: incident pages go out through Resend with an acknowledge link, and sent and delivered status is recorded on the incident. Acknowledge an incident from the page e-mail through a signed, single-use link that opens a confirmation page. The link expires within 24 hours.
- 06
Acknowledge stops it
Acknowledging an incident stops the escalation.
Key differences
Five places the two platforms diverge.
Explainability, pricing approach, alert handling, incident lifecycle and migration approach — the areas buyers ask about most, each side sourced.
Explainability
CallHeim CallHeim’s alert handling is rule-based and deterministic: given the same alert, settings and state it makes the same decision, and no AI model reads your alert data today.
PagerDuty Four documented alert-grouping methods (Intelligent, Alert Content, Intelligent+Content, Time-only), three of them rule-based and configurable; grouping of any kind requires the AIOps add-on. (PagerDuty alert grouping documentation, checked 2026-09-24)
Pricing approach
CallHeim Starter $9, Pro $15 and Business $29 per user per month. Enterprise is negotiated. Paid plans are activated directly by the CallHeim team.
PagerDuty Per-seat pricing: Free $0; Professional $25/mo, or $21/mo on an annual plan; Business $49/mo, or $41/mo on an annual plan; Enterprise custom. (PagerDuty pricing page, checked 2026-09-24)
Alert handling
CallHeim Repeats of the same alert collapse onto one incident while they keep arriving within five minutes of each other.
PagerDuty Four documented alert-grouping methods (Intelligent, Alert Content, Intelligent+Content, Time-only), three of them rule-based and configurable; grouping of any kind requires the AIOps add-on. (PagerDuty alert grouping documentation, checked 2026-09-24)
Incident lifecycle
CallHeim Four incident states (Triggered, Acknowledged, Resolved, Closed) and five severities (P1 to P5). A resolved incident can be reopened; a closed incident is final.
PagerDuty Professional includes an external status page (up to 250 subscribers) and 1,000 one-time AI Actions, limited to 2 teams and 2 incident roles. (PagerDuty pricing page, checked 2026-09-24)
Migration approach
CallHeim Import tooling (early access) reads your PagerDuty or Opsgenie configuration (US-region accounts); an optional dry run lets you review the result before anything is written to your workspace.
PagerDuty The PagerDuty/pagerduty Terraform provider is listed on the Terraform Registry, partner tier, v3.36.0 (published 2026-08-25). (Terraform Registry API, checked 2026-09-24)
Pricing approach
A 25-seat scenario, at list price.
Formula: seats × rate × 12, list prices only, no tax or discounts. Paid plans are activated directly by the CallHeim team.
CallHeim Pro
$4,500a year
25 seats × $15 / user / month × 12
Some features are tied to plan: the REST incident API and related-incident insights on Pro and above; email-to-alert (per-workspace inbound alert e-mail addresses) on Trial, Business and Enterprise, not Starter or Pro.
PagerDuty Professional
$6,300a year
25 seats × $21 / user / month × 12
Professional includes an external status page (up to 250 subscribers) and 1,000 one-time AI Actions, limited to 2 teams and 2 incident roles. (PagerDuty pricing page, checked 2026-09-24)
List prices, before tax or discounts. Paid plans are activated directly by the CallHeim team. A workspace’s public status page lives at app.callheim.com/status/your-slug and your team updates it by hand. CallHeim does not price a status page by subscriber count the way PagerDuty’s external status page does, and the two vendors’ plans bundle different capabilities at each tier — compare inclusions against your own requirements, not the seat price alone. Scenario dated 2026-09-24 — vendor prices change, so re-check before relying on it.
Migration
Moving from PagerDuty.
Import tooling (early access) reads your PagerDuty or Opsgenie configuration (US-region accounts); an optional dry run lets you review the result before anything is written to your workspace. During a move you can also run in parallel: Run in parallel during a move: CallHeim receives PagerDuty Events API v1 and v2 bodies, Opsgenie outgoing webhooks, and alerts forwarded from Splunk On-Call, Squadcast, Zenduty and Grafana OnCall. Every sender needs a CallHeim integration URL and key; existing PagerDuty routing keys are not reused.
Snapshot
A selected capability comparison.
A handful of credible, sourced comparisons, not an exhaustive feature grid: CallHeim's own status from the capability registry, next to a sourced PagerDuty fact.
- Status pageavailable
- Alert groupingavailable
- Integrations catalogueearly access
| Topic | CallHeim | PagerDuty |
|---|---|---|
| Status page | Available. Every workspace has a public status page that your team updates by hand. | Professional includes an external status page (up to 250 subscribers) and 1,000 one-time AI Actions, limited to 2 teams and 2 incident roles. Business adds a 500-subscriber external page, internal status pages, 5,000 AI Actions and custom fields; Enterprise adds premium status pages, 20,000 AI Actions, Stakeholder License and Live Call Routing. PagerDuty pricing page · PagerDuty pricing page · checked 2026-09-24 |
| Alert grouping | The thresholds behind the noise handling are published: a 300-second dedup window, a flap threshold of 4 state changes in 600 seconds, and title-similarity grouping at a default of 0.6. | Four documented alert-grouping methods (Intelligent, Alert Content, Intelligent+Content, Time-only), three of them rule-based and configurable; grouping of any kind requires the AIOps add-on. PagerDuty alert grouping documentation · checked 2026-09-24 |
| Pricing model | List price per seat: Starter $9, Pro $15, Business $29 per user per month. Enterprise is negotiated. | Per-seat pricing: Free $0; Professional $25/mo, or $21/mo on an annual plan; Business $49/mo, or $41/mo on an annual plan; Enterprise custom. PagerDuty pricing page · checked 2026-09-24 |
| Integrations catalogue | 136 catalogued alert sources, each with a payload mapping and a setup page. Each alert source has a payload mapping for that tool’s webhook format and its own setup page, built and tested against sample payloads. | PagerDuty self-reports 750+ out-of-the-box integrations. PagerDuty pricing page · checked 2026-09-24 |
CallHeim statuses reviewed 2026-09-24; PagerDuty facts checked 2026-09-24. Vendor prices and inclusions change — re-check before relying on a figure here.
Questions
About switching.
Can I migrate from PagerDuty?
Import tooling (early access) reads your PagerDuty or Opsgenie configuration (US-region accounts); an optional dry run lets you review the result before anything is written to your workspace. During the move you can also run in parallel: Run in parallel during a move: CallHeim receives PagerDuty Events API v1 and v2 bodies, Opsgenie outgoing webhooks, and alerts forwarded from Splunk On-Call, Squadcast, Zenduty and Grafana OnCall. Every sender needs a CallHeim integration URL and key; existing PagerDuty routing keys are not reused.
How are alerts grouped and deduplicated?
An accepted alert is normalised to one record with five severity levels (P1 to P5) and a stable fingerprint. Repeats of the same alert collapse onto one incident while they keep arriving within five minutes of each other. A repeat that arrives after a longer quiet gap opens a new incident. The thresholds behind the noise handling are published: a 300-second dedup window, a flap threshold of 4 state changes in 600 seconds, and title-similarity grouping at a default of 0.6.
How does pricing work?
Starter $9, Pro $15 and Business $29 per user per month. Enterprise is negotiated. Paid plans are activated directly by the CallHeim team. Some features are tied to plan: the REST incident API and related-incident insights on Pro and above; email-to-alert (per-workspace inbound alert e-mail addresses) on Trial, Business and Enterprise, not Starter or Pro.
Try it on one service before you move the pager.
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