Cabot vs Grafana OnCall
Self-host pick — both replace PagerDuty (On-call rotation / incident response / paging).
Both Cabot and Grafana OnCall self-host as a replacement for PagerDuty (On-call rotation / incident response / paging). Pick Cabot if you want the lighter footprint — 20min docker-compose (Cabot + Postgres), $5 vps; sms via twilio at the usual per-leg rate. Pick Grafana OnCall if you need teams already running Grafana / Prometheus that want on-call to live next to dashboards — 30min docker-compose (OnCall engine + Postgres + Redis + Celery worker) and $10-15 vps; sms/voice still costs at twilio's per-leg rate ($0.
| Cabotopen-source | Grafana OnCallopen-source | |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Setup time | 20min docker-compose (Cabot + Postgres) | 30min docker-compose (OnCall engine + Postgres + Redis + Celery worker) |
| Monthly cost | $5 VPS; SMS via Twilio at the usual per-leg rate. | $10-15 VPS; SMS/voice still costs at Twilio's per-leg rate ($0.0075-0.05/leg). |
| GitHub | cabotapp/cabot | grafana/oncall |
| Replaces | PagerDuty | PagerDuty |
Good fit for
Cabot
Small teams that want a simple on-call + uptime monitoring combo in one app, without the Grafana ecosystem dependency.
Weak at:**GitHub repo returns 404** — `cabotapp/cabot` is no longer reachable on github.com (renamed, deleted, or moved); freshness pill renders as `unknown`. Treat as unmaintained until a successor namespace is confirmed. Maintenance had already slowed for years; fewer integrations than Keep.
Grafana OnCall
Teams already running Grafana / Prometheus that want on-call to live next to dashboards.
Weak at:**Repository archived 2026-03-24** — Grafana announced end-of-development; the freshness pill on this page reflects that. Existing self-hosted deploys keep running, but no upstream fixes are coming. Web UI is functional, not polished; mobile app exists but is thinner than PagerDuty's.
In a terminal? npx -y github:SolvoHQ/os-alt-cli pagerduty prints PagerDuty's self-host options including both —
how the CLI works →
FAQ
Which is easier to self-host, Cabot or Grafana OnCall?
Cabot: 20min docker-compose (Cabot + Postgres). Grafana OnCall: 30min docker-compose (OnCall engine + Postgres + Redis + Celery worker).
What does each cost to run?
Cabot: $5 VPS; SMS via Twilio at the usual per-leg rate.. Grafana OnCall: $10-15 VPS; SMS/voice still costs at Twilio's per-leg rate ($0.0075-0.05/leg).. Both projects are free and open source.
Do Cabot and Grafana OnCall replace the same SaaS?
Yes — both are open-source alternatives to PagerDuty.