Head to head · Incidents · October 2026 research run
incident.io API vs Rootly MCP Server
incident.io API scores 68.9 (B) on agent readiness against Rootly MCP Server's 59.7 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Rootly MCP Server leads on payments & pricing. Both do incidents.
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Which one, for what
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 48
- Schema & documentation, 88 against 78
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
Good for Incident and on-call agents in teams that already run Rootly.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 20 against 10
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source
Watch for
Hosted connections expose write tools by default, and the docs describe the read-only switch only for servers the owner runs
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | incident.io API | Rootly MCP Server | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 90 | 48 | incident.io API +42 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 88 | 78 | incident.io API +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 75 | 77 | Rootly MCP Server +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 64 | 65 | Rootly MCP Server +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 10 | 20 | Rootly MCP Server +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 81 | incident.io API +2 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 76 | 80 | Rootly MCP Server +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | -3 | |
| Total | 68.9 · B | 59.7 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | incident.io API | Rootly MCP Server |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | MCP server |
| Vendor | Pineapple Technology Ltd. (incident.io) | Rootly Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://mcp.incident.io/mcp | https://mcp.rootly.com/mcp |
| Transports | HTTP | Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy), stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| Price for incidents | $19 per seat per month | $20 per seat per month |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under incident.io's Terms and Conditions. The SDKs, the inc CLI and the skills plugin on GitHub are MIT | Apache-2.0 for the server. The hosted service runs under Rootly's Terms of Use |
| Tools exposed | none | 218 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | com.rootly/mcp-server |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-01 | 2026-07-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2024-02-15 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 1.3k npm/wk | none |
Verdicts
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.
Rootly MCP Server
The server is open source under Apache-2.0, ships a dated release about every two weeks, and has a slim profile and a Code Mode endpoint that cut the 218-tool list. Hosted connections expose write tools by default, and the 2.3.21 changelog records telemetry changes that broke tool calls for clients with cached schemas in late September 2026.
Before you call either
incident.io API
- Send
Authorization: Bearer <key>to https://api.incident.io and callGET /v1/identityfirst to read the key's roles - Send a fresh
idempotency_keywith every create call for incidents, incident updates, timeline items, escalations and status page incidents. A repeated key returns the first result - Page with
page_sizeandafteruntil no cursor comes back. Do not stop at a short or empty page - Keep
GET /v2/incidentsunder 60 requests a minute and wait the seconds inRetry-Afteron 429 - Incident creation is limited to 10 an hour per key when a Slack or Teams channel is created, 300 an hour otherwise
Rootly MCP Server
- Connect to
https://mcp.rootly.com/mcp-codemodeor add?tool_profile=slimto/mcp. The default endpoint loads about 218 tool definitions - Connect Code Mode in place of the classic endpoint, not beside it. The docs say models skip
executewhen both are present - Use a Global API key for
get_oncall_handoff_summaryandget_oncall_shift_metrics. Team and personal keys return partial results - Refetch the tool list after a server release. Curated tools reject undeclared arguments, which failed calls from cached schemas in September 2026
- Treat a 404 from a generated tool as a possible plan limit or missing parent record, and read the hint in the response
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, incident.io API or Rootly MCP Server?
incident.io API scores 68.9 (B) on agent readiness against Rootly MCP Server's 59.7 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Rootly MCP Server leads on payments & pricing.
Which is cheaper for incidents, incident.io API or Rootly MCP Server?
They cost about the same, $19 per seat per month for incident.io API and $20 per seat per month for Rootly MCP Server. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.
Do incident.io API and Rootly MCP Server need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call incident.io API and Rootly MCP Server without installing anything?
Yes. incident.io API has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.incident.io/mcp and Rootly MCP Server at https://mcp.rootly.com/mcp.
Are incident.io API and Rootly MCP Server open source?
No open-source release is listed for incident.io API. Rootly MCP Server is open source (Apache-2.0 for the server. The hosted service runs under Rootly's Terms of Use).
Other comparisons with incident.io API or Rootly MCP Server
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/incident-io-vs-rootly-mcp.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/incident-io.json·/api/v1/tools/rootly-mcp.json - From a terminal
anchor compare incident-io rootly-mcp(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "incident-io", "b": "rootly-mcp"}at/mcp, no key