Dynatrace vs PagerDuty
Dynatrace and PagerDuty are both uptime & monitoring tools. Dynatrace is aimed at enterprise and developers, while PagerDuty is aimed at developers and enterprise. Only PagerDuty has a free plan.
AI-driven observability and app security for large cloud estates
On-call scheduling, alerting and incident response for ops teams
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium · $25 |
| Starting price | Not published | $25/mo |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Free trial | 15 days | 14 days |
| Built for | Enterprise, Developers | Developers, Enterprise, Small businesses |
| Platforms | web | web, ios, android |
| Country | US · 2005 | US · 2009 |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose Dynatrace if
Large enterprises running complex hybrid or Kubernetes environments that want automatic instrumentation and AI root-cause analysis.
- Automatic discovery and instrumentation save weeks of manual setup
- Root-cause analysis cuts alert noise better than threshold-based tools
- One platform covers APM, infrastructure, logs, RUM and runtime security
Look elsewhere if: Startups and small teams that need a cheap, self-serve monitoring tool (Datadog, New Relic or Grafana Cloud are easier entry points).
Choose PagerDuty if
Engineering and IT operations teams that run critical production services and need proven on-call paging and incident coordination.
- Highly reliable paging, the industry reference for on-call
- Largest integration catalogue among incident tools
- Free plan is enough for very small teams
Look elsewhere if: Small teams wanting cheap, bundled uptime monitoring and paging (Better Stack, Grafana Cloud IRM).
Dynatrace vs PagerDuty pricing
Dynatrace
- Foundation & Discovery$7/host/moBasic host health and discovery; billed per host-hour
- Infrastructure Monitoring$29/host/moHosts, processes and networks; $0.04 per host-hour
- Full-Stack Monitoring$58/8 GiB host/moAPM, tracing, code-level analysis; Kubernetes pods included
- Log Analytics$0.20/GiBIngest price; retention and queries billed separately or bundled
- Real User Monitoring$2.25/1,000 sessions$4.50 per 1,000 with Session Replay; 35-day retention
PagerDuty
- Free$0Up to 5 users, 1 schedule, 100 SMS/phone alerts a month
- Professional$25/user/mo$21/user/mo billed annually; post-incident reviews
- Starter (Platform)$2,800/yr10 seats, 5,000 events, 1,000 AI actions; billed upfront
- Essential (Platform)$12,000/yr20 seats, 40,000 events, 4,000 AI actions
- Plus (Platform)$48,000/yr50 seats, 150,000 events, 16,000 AI actions
Dynatrace · Key features
- OneAgent auto-instruments hosts, containers, processes and code with one install
- Smartscape topology map of live service and infrastructure dependencies
- Grail data lakehouse for logs, metrics, traces and events queried with DQL
- Causal AI that collapses alert storms into a single root-cause problem
- Real user monitoring with session replay and synthetic browser checks
- Runtime vulnerability analytics and application protection on monitored hosts
Cons
- Requires an annual spend commitment, so not suited to small teams
- Consumption pricing across many meters is hard to forecast
- DQL and the platform's breadth take real time to learn
PagerDuty · Key features
- On-call schedules, overrides and multi-level escalation policies
- Alert routing, grouping and deduplication from 700+ integrations
- Push, SMS, phone and email notifications with mobile acknowledgement
- Incident channels and actions inside Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Post-incident reviews and operational analytics
- AIOps add-on for event correlation and noise reduction
Cons
- Costs rise fast with AIOps, status pages and automation add-ons
- Packaging and plan names change often, making comparisons hard
- Platform tiers require annual upfront payment
Dynatrace vs PagerDuty: FAQ
Do Dynatrace and PagerDuty have a free plan?
Dynatrace has no free plan, a 15-day free trial. PagerDuty has a free plan.
Which is better for small businesses, Dynatrace or PagerDuty?
PagerDuty lists small businesses as a core audience, while Dynatrace is aimed more at enterprise and developers.