Grafana OnCall alternative — keep Grafana, replace the paging layer
Grafana OnCall OSS was archived on March 24, 2026 and the cloud version lives on as Grafana IRM, billed per active user. If you self-hosted OnCall or don't want your paging tied to your dashboard vendor, WardenPoint replaces the alerting layer at a flat fee — your Grafana alert rules stay exactly where they are.
Stay with Grafana IRM if you live in Grafana Cloud and want incident management inside the same roof. Choose WardenPoint if you want standalone alerting at a flat fee — keep Grafana for dashboards and alert rules, point one webhook contact point at us.
OnCall OSS archived
Mar 24, 2026
WardenPoint Pro flat
$29/mo
Grafana Cloud Pro · 20 users
~$359/mo
Contact-point swap
~3 min
Feature matrix
Honest side-by-side
We say where Grafana IRM has us beat. Trust requires it.
Capability
Grafana OnCall / IRM
WardenPoint
Native Grafana alert routing
Receiving alerts from Grafana-managed and Mimir/Loki alert rules.
Yes — built into Grafana Cloud
Yes — webhook contact point, ~3-minute setup
Self-hosted / OSS option
Running the alerting layer on your own infrastructure.
Archived — repo is read-only, no security fixes
No — WardenPoint is SaaS only
Works without Grafana Cloud
Using the paging layer independently of the dashboard vendor.
No — IRM requires Grafana Cloud
Yes — standalone, any monitoring source
Telegram delivery
Text messages with acknowledgement buttons.
Yes — text notifications
Yes — text, voice messages and VoIP calls
Telegram VoIP voice calls
A real ringing call inside Telegram — bypasses muted chats.
No
Yes — wakes the responder, DND-resistant
PSTN phone calls
Real calls to landlines and mobiles with text-to-speech.
Yes — webhook-first, same contract for every source
Pricing model
What happens to the bill as the team grows.
Per active user — ~$20/user/mo on Cloud Pro
Flat per workspace — $29/mo regardless of team size
Free tier
Trying the product without a credit card.
Yes — up to 3 users in Grafana Cloud
Yes — free plan, no card required
Competitor names are trademarks of their respective owners. WardenPoint is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by them. This comparison is for informational purposes only and is based on publicly available information as of June 2026; features and pricing change — please verify current details on each vendor's website.
When Grafana IRM fits
Stay if Grafana Cloud is your home
Your observability already lives in Grafana Cloud and the IRM bundle (incident management + on-call + alerting in one UI) is worth the per-user fee.
You want alert groups, escalation and incident timelines rendered inside the same Grafana UI your engineers stare at all day.
Grafana Labs support contracts and the surrounding ecosystem matter to your procurement.
Three or fewer responders — the Grafana Cloud free tier covers you at zero cost.
When WardenPoint fits
Switch if you want paging decoupled and flat-priced
You self-hosted OnCall OSS and the March 2026 archive leaves you running unpatched code with no security fixes.
You want the paging layer independent from your dashboard vendor — swap Grafana, keep your alerting.
A flat $29/mo beats per-active-user math the moment your on-call pool passes a handful of people.
Your team lives in Telegram — VoIP calls, voice messages and acknowledgement buttons are first-class here, not an afterthought.
You aggregate more than Grafana: Prometheus Alertmanager, Zabbix, Sentry, Uptime Kuma and custom webhooks share one escalation contract.
Migration path
From Grafana OnCall to WardenPoint in five steps
A typical setup migrates in an afternoon. The contact-point swap itself takes about three minutes.
1
Inventory your OnCall setup
Export integrations, escalation chains, schedules and user notification rules while your instance is still healthy — via the OnCall API or the UI. The archived OSS code keeps running, but every passing month makes the snapshot more valuable.
2
Create a WardenPoint workspace
Sign up free, add your recipients and their contact channels — Telegram, phone numbers, email, WhatsApp. Each recipient confirms their channel once; no app install required.
3
Point Grafana at WardenPoint
Add WardenPoint as a webhook contact point in Grafana Alerting and route by labels. This is the same integration described on our Grafana page — about three minutes including the test alert.
4
Rebuild chains and schedules
Recreate your escalation chains and on-call schedules from the step-1 inventory. Most teams simplify here: OnCall configs accumulate years of dead routes that nobody dares delete.
5
Run both in parallel, then retire OnCall
Keep OnCall receiving for a week while WardenPoint handles the real paging. Fire test alerts at each priority, verify acknowledgement closes the chain, then remove the old contact point.
Migration FAQ
Common questions about leaving Grafana OnCall
The open-source Grafana OnCall repository was archived on March 24, 2026 and is now read-only. The cloud product entered maintenance mode earlier (March 2025) and its successor is Grafana IRM, available inside Grafana Cloud.
Ready when you are
Keep Grafana. Replace the paging.
Free tier, no card. Point one contact point at WardenPoint and fire a test alert before you commit to anything.