Updated 30 March 2026

PagerDuty Free Plan

5 users, basic alerting across email, SMS, push, and phone calls. 1 escalation policy with on-call scheduling. No credit card required. Here is exactly what you get, what you do not get, and how to configure PagerDuty Free for maximum effectiveness.

What You Get (Free)

  • Up to 5 users
  • Email, SMS, push, and phone call notifications
  • 1 escalation policy with multiple escalation rules
  • Basic on-call scheduling with rotation support
  • Core integrations (Datadog, CloudWatch, New Relic, Prometheus)
  • Mobile app (full incident management on iOS and Android)
  • Incident creation, acknowledgment, and resolution
  • Basic reporting and incident history
  • No credit card required, no time limit

What You Do Not Get

  • More than 5 users
  • Multiple escalation policies (limited to 1)
  • Response automation (response plays)
  • Event Intelligence / AIOps alert grouping
  • Service dependency mapping
  • Built-in status page
  • Stakeholder notifications (mass communication)
  • Advanced analytics and MTTR tracking
  • Live call routing

Optimal Setup for a 3-Person Startup On-Call

Here is how to configure PagerDuty Free for maximum effectiveness with a small engineering team.

Step 1: Create your escalation policy

With only 1 escalation policy on the free plan, make it count. Set up 3 escalation rules: (1) Alert the primary on-call engineer immediately, (2) After 5 minutes without acknowledgment, alert the secondary on-call, (3) After 10 minutes, alert the team lead or CTO. Set the timeout to re-escalate if the incident is not acknowledged within 15 minutes total.

Step 2: Configure on-call schedule

Create a weekly rotation among your 3 engineers. PagerDuty supports layer-based scheduling on the free plan. Set the primary on-call to rotate every Monday at 9 AM. If you want a secondary layer, create it within the same schedule. Each engineer is on-call for 1 week, then off for 2 weeks.

Step 3: Set up 2 to 3 key integrations

Connect your primary monitoring tools. For a typical startup: (1) AWS CloudWatch for infrastructure alerts, (2) your application error tracking (Sentry, Bugsnag) via email integration, and (3) your uptime monitor (Pingdom, UptimeRobot) via webhook. Each integration feeds alerts into PagerDuty, which routes them through your escalation policy.

Step 4: Configure notification preferences per user

Each team member should set their notification preferences: immediate push notification plus SMS for high-urgency alerts, email only for low-urgency. Set up quiet hours if you want to suppress low-urgency notifications during sleep. High-urgency alerts always break through. Test notifications by creating a test incident.

Step 5: Install the mobile app

All team members should install the PagerDuty mobile app (iOS and Android). Configure push notifications and test them. The mobile app is where most on-call engineers interact with PagerDuty. Ensure the app is exempted from battery optimization and Do Not Disturb settings so notifications always arrive.

When the Free Plan Is Not Enough

The free plan serves most startups well during the first 6 to 12 months. You will know it is time to upgrade when you encounter these situations:

  • Your team grows beyond 5 on-call engineers. The free plan hard caps at 5 users.
  • You need different escalation policies for different services. A single policy means your database alerts and your payment processing alerts follow the same escalation chain, even if different teams should handle them.
  • Alert volume increases beyond what manual management can handle. Without Event Intelligence, every alert creates a separate incident. At 20+ alerts per day, this becomes unmanageable.
  • You need response automation. Response plays (automatically adding responders, creating Slack channels, sending stakeholder updates) save critical minutes during incidents but require Professional or above.
  • You need a status page. Communicating incident status to customers requires the Business plan or a separate tool.

The upgrade path is smooth. Professional at $21/user/month for 5 users is $105/month. For a startup with any meaningful revenue or funding, the upgrade cost is trivial compared to the operational improvements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is PagerDuty Free really free with no hidden costs?
Yes. PagerDuty Free is genuinely free for up to 5 users with no credit card required to sign up. There are no per-alert charges, no SMS fees, and no time limit. You can use the free plan indefinitely. The limitations are functional (1 escalation policy, no response automation, basic integrations only) rather than financial.
Can I use PagerDuty Free for production systems?
Yes. Many startups use PagerDuty Free for production alerting. The core alerting features (multi-channel notifications, on-call scheduling, escalation) work the same as paid plans. The main risk is the single escalation policy limit: if your one escalation chain fails to reach someone, there is no backup policy. For critical production systems, consider upgrading to Professional ($21/user/mo) for unlimited escalation policies.
What integrations are available on the free plan?
The free plan includes core integrations with major monitoring tools: Datadog, New Relic, AWS CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix, and email-based integrations (any tool that can send email alerts). Advanced integrations like Jira bi-directional sync, Slack incident channels, and custom event transformations may require paid plans. The core monitoring integrations are sufficient for most startup setups.
When should I upgrade from Free to Professional?
Upgrade when: (1) your on-call team grows beyond 5 people, (2) you need more than 1 escalation policy (typically when you have multiple services or teams), (3) you need response automation (automated response plays that add responders, create bridges, send stakeholder updates), or (4) you need advanced scheduling features. Most teams outgrow the free plan within 6 to 12 months of scaling.
Can I downgrade from a paid plan back to Free?
Yes. You can downgrade from Professional or Business back to Free at any time. When downgrading, you will lose access to features beyond the free tier (additional escalation policies, response automation, Event Intelligence). Your historical data is retained. Make sure your team is 5 or fewer users before downgrading, as excess users will be deactivated.
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