Head to head · Incidents · October 2026 research run
Grafana MCP Server vs PagerDuty MCP Server
Grafana MCP Server scores 74.5 (BB) on agent readiness against PagerDuty MCP Server's 48.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do incidents.
Which one, for what
Good for Teams on Grafana, self-managed or Cloud, that want an agent to read dashboards and query Prometheus, Loki, Tempo and Pyroscope, and to work with alert rules, incidents and OnCall.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 91 against 52
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 74 against 49
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 95 against 32
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 63
Also in its favour
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source
Watch for
The default set is 79 tools and about 107 KB of definitions, and 119 tools with every category on
Good for Incident and on-call agents in PagerDuty shops.
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Grafana MCP Server loses 3 points for them
Watch for
No read-only mode on the hosted server, where the local one was read-only by default
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Grafana MCP Server | PagerDuty MCP Server | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 91 | 52 | Grafana MCP Server +39 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 81 | 55 | Grafana MCP Server +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 74 | 49 | Grafana MCP Server +25 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 65 | 66 | PagerDuty MCP Server +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 10 | Grafana MCP Server +50 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 95 | 32 | Grafana MCP Server +63 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 79 | 63 | Grafana MCP Server +16 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| Total | 74.5 · BB | 48.4 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Grafana MCP Server | PagerDuty MCP Server |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | MCP server | MCP server |
| Vendor | Grafana Labs | PagerDuty |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://mcp.pagerduty.com/mcp |
| Transports | stdio, SSE (legacy), Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Your plan |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 119 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | io.github.grafana/mcp-grafana | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-09-04 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2023-12-21 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-10 | 2025-09-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Popularity | 3.5k stars, 152k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 1.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Grafana MCP Server
Every tool carries typed inputs and read-only, destructive and idempotent annotations, and --disable-write cuts the default 79 tools to 62. Writes and a general grafana_api_request tool are on by default, the default tool list is about 107 KB, and usage statistics have been sent to Grafana Labs by default since 2.0.0.
PagerDuty MCP Server
Scoped OAuth with per-resource scopes and mandatory PKCE, or an API key in a header. No read-only mode on the hosted server, where the local one was read-only by default.
Before you call either
Grafana MCP Server
- Start with
--disable-writeunless the task needs writes, and add--disable-apito removegrafana_api_request - Pass
--enabled-toolswith only the categories needed. The default list loads 79 tools - Use
get_dashboard_summaryorget_dashboard_propertywith a JSONPath beforeget_dashboard_by_uid, which returns the whole dashboard JSON - Set
GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS=disabledorDO_NOT_TRACK=1to stop the four-hourly usage report to stats.grafana.org - Use streamable HTTP, not SSE, when each caller needs its own token or organisation, and set
--server-auth-tokenon any non-loopback address
PagerDuty MCP Server
- Use a scoped OAuth client with read scopes only if the agent shouldn't acknowledge, resolve or edit anything
- Use a user API key or user OAuth for
assignedorteamsfilters. Account-level keys fail those calls - Pass
limitand asincedate on incident lists. The default limit is 1,000 records - EU accounts must use mcp.eu.pagerduty.com
- On 429, wait
ratelimit-resetseconds. There's no Retry-After header
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Grafana MCP Server or PagerDuty MCP Server?
Grafana MCP Server scores 74.5 (BB) on agent readiness against PagerDuty MCP Server's 48.4 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.
Do Grafana MCP Server and PagerDuty MCP Server need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Grafana MCP Server and PagerDuty MCP Server without installing anything?
Grafana MCP Server runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. PagerDuty MCP Server has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.pagerduty.com/mcp.
Are Grafana MCP Server and PagerDuty MCP Server open source?
Grafana MCP Server is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for PagerDuty MCP Server.
Other comparisons with Grafana MCP Server or PagerDuty MCP Server
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-pagerduty-mcp.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/grafana-mcp-server.json·/api/v1/tools/pagerduty-mcp.json - From a terminal
anchor compare grafana-mcp-server pagerduty-mcp(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "grafana-mcp-server", "b": "pagerduty-mcp"}at/mcp, no key