# Better Stack vs incident.io API > incident.io scores 68.9 (B) to Better Stack's 54.2 (C) for incidents. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-incident-io - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-incident-io.md (~5,100 tokens) - Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt) - API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json - MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key) - DNS: dig +short TXT .grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.. and .vs.. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev) - Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data) - Updated: 2026-11-04 incident.io API scores 68.9 (B) on agent readiness against Better Stack's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Better Stack leads on payments & pricing. Both do incidents. - Better Stack: grade C, 54.2/100, rank #811 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/better-stack.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/better-stack.json - incident.io API: grade B, 68.9/100, rank #242 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/incident-io.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/incident-io.json - Best observability and incident tools for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/observability/index.md - All 49 observability comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/observability/index.md ## Which one, for what ### Better Stack (C) Good for: An agent that investigates incidents, queries logs and metrics with SQL, manages monitors and posts status page updates for a team already on Better Stack, with the Claude plugin as the shortest route. Ahead on: - Payments & pricing, 40 against 10 Watch for: No rate limit numbers in the API docs, and the only 429 guidance is to wait before retrying ### incident.io API (B) Good for: Agents that declare and update incidents, page people, read on-call schedules and post status page incidents in an organisation that already pays for incident.io. Ahead on: - Reliability, 90 against 50 - Schema & documentation, 88 against 46 - Agent ergonomics, 75 against 55 - Maintenance & community, 83 against 71 - Transparency & trust, 77 against 69 Watch for: The pricing page marks API, webhooks and MCP as not included in the free Basic plan. Team starts at $19 per user a month ## Why the edge ### Schema & documentation: incident.io API +42 - Better Stack (46): The server is closed and tools/list needs sign-in, so the tool schemas were not read, and no OpenAPI file was found for the REST APIs in the docs, the GitHub organisation or a search. Partial credit for a typed contract that exists but isn't public (10 of 25). No llms.txt on betterstack.com or its docs, and no Markdown twins (0). The MCP docs page gives one line per tool and says when some apply, such as Reopen incident within 24 hours and the instruction tools to call before Execute query. The REST reference pages describe each endpoint in a sentence (12 of 20). Inputs are typed only in the REST docs, with parameter tables, monitor types and status values listed in prose, and no schema to validate against (7 of 15). Every REST page carries a curl example and a 200 body; Create monitor documents a 422 with errors keyed by field, the Usage API a 401 and a 429, and no error code list exists (9 of 15). The APIs are versioned v2 in the path. The changelog is a product feed of 19 entries since March 2025 with the MCP server among them, with no API changelog and no deprecation notes (8 of 15). 10 + 0 + 12 + 7 + 9 + 8 = 46. - incident.io API (88): OpenAPI 3.0.3 description, public at api.incident.io/v1/openapiV3.json per the docs and read from docs.incident.io/openapi/latest.json, 284 operations and 777 schemas (25). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every docs page (10). Every operation has a description, but the median is 65 characters and few say when not to use a call. List incidents is the exception, with worked filter examples (12). 262 enums, required fields marked and two free-form objects in the whole file (13). 4,014 example values and thirteen error statuses on every operation, though the shared error example pairs an unrelated code and message (13). Versions sit in the path per resource and the changelog is generated from the description file (15). ### Reliability: incident.io API +40 - Better Stack (50): Read with the hosted lines and scored on the remote MCP server at mcp.betterstack.com, which fronts the same service as the Incidents and Telemetry APIs. status.betterstack.com runs on Better Stack's own status page product with three components and a 90-day history (20). Between 5 August and 3 November 2026 it records delayed Telemetry data processing in the Europe region from 3 to 6 September in entries of 6 hours 19 minutes, 10 hours 10 minutes, 19 hours 13 minutes, 21 hours 45 minutes and 1 day, a 9-minute Telemetry degradation on 20 August, 39 minutes of wrong downtime notifications on 21 October and 8 minutes of dashboard unavailability on 2 November, every one labelled degraded, plus two migrations labelled maintenance (11 hours 13 minutes on 9 August and 17 hours). About four days of delayed log processing in one region is more than trivial and less than an outage of the API, so between minor-only and one major (15). No rate limit numbers were found in the API or MCP docs (0). The Usage API documents a 429 with the instruction to wait before retrying, with no Retry-After, no backoff guidance and no idempotency keys. `Upsert catalog records` is documented as not creating duplicates when repeated (5 of 15). No SLA. The terms supply the service as is, and the enterprise page lists SLA reporting as a feature (0). The MCP server was announced on 15 September 2025 and carries no beta label (10). 20 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 0 + 10 = 50. - incident.io API (90): Scored as a hosted API. status.incident.io lists components with history, API and MCP among them (20). The feed, re-read on 1 November 2026, has four incidents in the 90 days from 3 August, each on one component. Opsgenie webhook delays on 3 August, alert listing in the public API and dashboard on 18 August until a rollback (no duration given), Microsoft Teams latency from 13:00 to 15:08 UTC on 20 August and Slack Enterprise Grid login errors for a subset of customers on 2 October. All partial, nothing since 2 October (20). Limits are published with numbers, 1,200 requests a minute per key and lower figures for eight endpoints (15). 429 carries `Retry-After`, the body recommends exponential backoff, and seven create calls require an `idempotency_key` (15). The SLA commits to 99.9 per cent a month on Pro and Enterprise (10). The API carries no beta label (10). ### Payments & pricing: Better Stack +30 - Better Stack (40): Read with the hosted rubric. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-unit prices are public without login, by GB and region for telemetry, per responder, per status page and per phone number (20). The Free plan has 10 monitors, a status page and 3 GB of logs, the signup page says Sign up for free and names no card, and we did not run the signup flow (20). A person signs up in a browser and mints a token or completes OAuth there (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40. - incident.io API (10): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices per seat are public, Team at $19 and Pro at $25 a user a month, with no per-call price (10). The Basic plan is free, but the pricing page marks API, webhooks and MCP as not included, and the docs route trials through sales (0). A person signs up, pays and creates a key in the dashboard (0). ### Agent ergonomics: incident.io API +20 - Better Stack (55): 148 tools are named on the docs page, more than 30 (5). X-MCP-Tools-Only and X-MCP-Tools-Except narrow the list to a subset or a read-only set, documented for that purpose, and the server has no default toolset (add 10, so 15). REST lists take page and per_page up to 250 with first, last, prev and next links, and filters by url, pronounceable_name and team_name. Plan query windows splits a long telemetry query into windows, and Execute query takes SQL with its own LIMIT. No field selection (16 of 20). 422 bodies name the field that failed and 401 gives a message, but no error code list exists and MCP errors are not documented (10 of 20). No idempotency keys. `Upsert catalog records` avoids duplicates, Reopen incident is limited to 24 hours, and the annotations on the tools couldn't be read (6 of 20). Get workspace style defaults are not described. Two Terraform providers and logging clients exist, but no official API SDK in any language, and the Claude plugin's 16 skills carry the query recipes (8 of 15). 15 + 16 + 10 + 6 + 8 = 55. - incident.io API (75): Scored for the REST API. `page_size` sets response size, but no field selection was found and incident objects are large. The description file is 5.4 MB, with per-resource files as the smaller route (12). Cursor pagination on 41 list operations and operator filters such as `status_category[one_of]` (18). Errors carry a code, a message, the field at fault and a `request_id` (18). `idempotency_key` is required on seven create calls, and updates by PUT have no key (14). Seven official SDKs and a CLI with JSON output, with `idempotency_key` and `visibility` required to create an incident (13). ### Maintenance & community: incident.io API +12 - Better Stack (71): Read as a closed service. The Claude plugin reached 1.3.12 on 2 November 2026 and the changelog's newest entry is 29 October 2026 (30). Changelog entries on 10 August, 9 September, 1 October, 15 October and 29 October 2026 (20). Public changelog, hello@betterstack.com with a stated reply within a few hours, and a community site. GitHub issues on the plugin repositories were not read (10 of 15). The MCP server is not in the official MCP registry under a verified namespace, the only entries matching the name being third-party scrapers, and there is no official API SDK. The Claude, Cursor, Codex and Antigravity plugins and two Terraform providers are current (5 of 15). The Claude plugin repository is MIT with 12 commit days since June 2026, and we didn't read its CI (6 of 10). 30 + 20 + 10 + 5 + 6 = 71. - incident.io API (83): The API changelog's newest entry is 30 October 2026 (30). 53 dated entries between 3 August and 30 October 2026 (20). A public changelog, support by email and a Slack community, with reply times not checked (10). Seven official SDKs generated from the description file, TypeScript 2.40.0 and Python 2.39.0 both tagged 31 October 2026, and both READMEs say a schema check stops any break from shipping as a minor version (15). The SDK and CLI repositories have test workflows, and the two SDKs read were first tagged in September 2026 and reached a second major version within two weeks (8). ### Transparency & trust: incident.io API +8 - Better Stack (69): Closed service under Terms of Use (14 February 2025) that name Better Stack, Inc., a Delaware corporation, under New York law. The plugins and Terraform providers are MIT (15 of 30). The privacy policy (25 November 2022) gives no retention periods and says data is processed primarily in the EU, while the DPA (25 February 2025) names the United States and other locations and promises return or destruction on termination. Telemetry retention is a plan term (3 days free, 30 days in bundles). OpenAI is a subprocessor and nothing says whether customer data is used for model training (14 of 30). No deprecation policy. The terms allow changes at Better Stack's discretion with continued use as acceptance, and the changelog carries no deprecation notices (3 of 20). Schedule A of the DPA lists nine subprocessors with locations, the security page says data is stored in EU regions by default with custom locations for enterprise, and no notice period for new subprocessors is given (16 of 20). 15 + 14 + 3 + 16 = 48. - incident.io API (77): Closed service under published Terms and Conditions effective 1 August 2026, with the SDKs, CLI and skills plugin under MIT (17). Privacy policy, DPA, sub-processor list and an AI data handling page are public. The terms limit training on customer content to the customer's own benefit. The security FAQ's statement that no data leaves Europe disagrees with a sub-processor list naming 17 processors in the United States, and retention is stated in general terms (20). Deprecated endpoints carry a removal date in their descriptions and the docs give integrators three months, but the changelog shows removals with no earlier entry (17). 20 sub-processors with locations and purposes, hosting regions named, 15 days' notice of changes in the DPA (18). ## Score by category | Category | Weight | Better Stack | incident.io API | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 50 | 90 | incident.io API +40 | | Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 46 | 88 | incident.io API +42 | | Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 75 | incident.io API +20 | | Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 60 | 64 | incident.io API +4 | | Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 10 | Better Stack +30 | | Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 83 | incident.io API +12 | | Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 77 | incident.io API +8 | | Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | | | **Total** | | **54.2 · C** | **68.9 · B** | | ## Facts side by side | Fact | Better Stack | incident.io API | | --- | --- | --- | | Kind | MCP server | HTTP API | | Vendor | Better Stack, Inc. | Pineapple Technology Ltd. (incident.io) | | Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.betterstack.com` | `https://mcp.incident.io/mcp` | | Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP | | Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key | | Pricing | Freemium | Paid | | Price for incidents | not published | $19 per seat per month | | x402 | no | no | | Licence | Proprietary hosted service under the Better Stack Terms of Use. The Claude, Cursor and Codex plugins and the Terraform providers on GitHub are MIT | Proprietary service under incident.io's Terms and Conditions. The SDKs, the `inc` CLI and the skills plugin on GitHub are MIT | | Tools exposed | 148 | none | | Read-only variant documented | yes | no | | llms.txt | no | yes | | Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 | | Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-08-01 | | Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2024-02-15 | | Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes | | Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes | | Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Popularity | 6 stars | 1.3k npm/wk | | Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (4) | ## How the scores have moved ### Better Stack No score change since it was listed. ### incident.io API - no change on 27 October 2026: checklist ## Verdicts **Better Stack.** One remote MCP server reaches incidents, on-call, monitors, status pages, logs, metrics, traces and errors with OAuth or a team-scoped token, and two headers cut its 148 tools down. Tool schemas and rate limits aren't published, there is no SLA, and audit logs of token use are a paid add-on. **incident.io API.** The REST API has a public OpenAPI description with 284 operations, numeric rate limits, `Retry-After` on 429 and required idempotency keys on seven create calls. API and MCP access need the Team plan or higher, so the free Basic plan cannot be used by an agent, and audit logs are Enterprise only. ## Before you call either ### Better Stack 1. Connect with `claude mcp add betterstack --transport http https://mcp.betterstack.com` and sign in, or send a team-based API token as `Authorization: Bearer`; pick Read access unless the task writes 2. Send `X-MCP-Tools-Only: monitors,monitor,incidents` or a similar list to keep the 148-tool list out of context, and `X-MCP-Tools-Except: remove_dashboard,remove_chart` to block deletes 3. Call `Get query instructions` or `Plan query windows` before `Execute query`, since long time ranges are split into windows and nothing documents a result size limit 4. No rate limit is published. Back off on a 429 and don't retry writes blindly, because there are no idempotency keys; `Upsert catalog records` is the one write documented as safe to repeat 5. Reopening an incident only works within 24 hours of its resolution, and a comment can only be edited or removed by its author or an API token ### incident.io API 1. Send `Authorization: Bearer ` to https://api.incident.io and call `GET /v1/identity` first to read the key's roles 2. Send a fresh `idempotency_key` with every create call for incidents, incident updates, timeline items, escalations and status page incidents. A repeated key returns the first result 3. Page with `page_size` and `after` until no cursor comes back. Do not stop at a short or empty page 4. Keep `GET /v2/incidents` under 60 requests a minute and wait the seconds in `Retry-After` on 429 5. Incident creation is limited to 10 an hour per key when a Slack or Teams channel is created, 300 an hour otherwise ## Questions ### Which is better for AI agents, Better Stack or incident.io API? incident.io API scores 68.9 (B) on agent readiness against Better Stack's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Better Stack leads on payments & pricing. ### Do Better Stack and incident.io API need an API key? Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in. ### Can an agent call Better Stack and incident.io API without installing anything? Yes. Better Stack has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.betterstack.com and incident.io API at https://mcp.incident.io/mcp. ## For agents - This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-incident-io.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-incident-io.min.md - Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "better-stack", "b": "incident-io"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare better-stack incident-io` - Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/better-stack.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/incident-io.json ## Other comparisons with Better Stack or incident.io API - [Axiom MCP Server vs incident.io API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axiom-vs-incident-io.md) - [Better Stack vs PagerDuty MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-pagerduty-mcp.md) - [Better Stack vs Rootly MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-rootly-mcp.md) - [Causely MCP server vs incident.io API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/causely-vs-incident-io.md) - [Datadog MCP Server vs incident.io API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datadog-mcp-vs-incident-io.md) - [Grafana MCP Server vs incident.io API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-incident-io.md) - [incident.io API vs New Relic MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/incident-io-vs-new-relic.md) - [incident.io API vs PagerDuty MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/incident-io-vs-pagerduty-mcp.md) - [incident.io API vs Rootly MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/incident-io-vs-rootly-mcp.md) - [Axiom MCP Server vs Better Stack](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axiom-vs-better-stack.md) - [Better Stack vs Causely MCP server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-causely.md) - [Better Stack vs Datadog MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-datadog-mcp.md) - [Better Stack vs Grafana MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-grafana-mcp-server.md) - [Better Stack vs Honeycomb MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-honeycomb-mcp.md) - [Better Stack vs New Relic MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-new-relic.md) - [Better Stack vs Sentry MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/better-stack-vs-sentry-mcp.md) --- Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp