PagerDuty is an incident response and on-call management platform focused on alerting and team coordination, while Splunk is a data analytics and monitoring platform that ingests, indexes, and analyzes machine-generated data. They serve different primary functions but increasingly overlap in observability workflows.
PagerDuty vs Splunk — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Incident response and on-call management platform for alert orchestration and team coordination.
Enterprise log management and security information platform with advanced analytics and machine learning
Primary Function. Starting Price (Annual). Data Ingestion Capacity (Standard). Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) Focus. Integration Ecosystem. Typical Implementation Time. Machine Learning Capabilities
Choose PagerDuty if your primary need is managing on-call schedules, routing alerts efficiently to the right teams, and reducing response times—it excels at orchestration and costs less to implement. Choose Splunk if you need deep log analysis, complex data correlation, security analytics, and root cause investigation across massive data volumes—it's the better platform for forensics and advanced observability but requires higher investment and longer setup.
PagerDuty: API-based integration | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: Cloud, hybrid, self-hosted (enterprise) | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: 200+ integrations | Splunk: N/A
Mean Time to Response (MTTR) Improvement
PagerDuty: Enterprise tier only | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: 60% via deduplication | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: 400+ via integrations | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: 75% alert noise reduction | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: No (integration only) | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: Native, advanced rotation policies | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: iOS & Android (full-featured) | Splunk: N/A
Average Incident Resolution Time Improvement
PagerDuty: 35% faster (reported by customers) | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: N/A - not data-focused | Splunk: $250-350
PagerDuty: <60 seconds | Splunk: Not applicable (generates alerts)
PagerDuty: Full (scheduling, ack, resolve on mobile) | Splunk: Limited (dashboards only)
PagerDuty: N/A - incident focused | Splunk: 30-365 days
PagerDuty: Incident pattern detection only | Splunk: Full ML for anomaly detection, forecasting, root cause analysis
PagerDuty: Not authorized | Splunk: FedRAMP Authorized
Base Monthly Cost (5 Users, Annual Commitment)
PagerDuty: ML-driven with event correlation | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: One-way basic plugin sync | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: Advanced (rotations, overrides, patterns) | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: Basic manual reviews | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: Chat integration required | Splunk: N/A
PagerDuty: Alerts: unlimited routing | Splunk: 500GB
PagerDuty: 10,000+ | Splunk: Limited by ingestion
PagerDuty: Basic correlation & anomaly detection | Splunk: Advanced: forecasting, clustering, outlier detection
PagerDuty: Low (UI-driven workflows) | Splunk: High (SPL requires training)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 30 days included
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 15-60 minutes (depends on alert configuration)
Starting Annual Cost (single user/endpoint)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Varies by threat rules configured
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 800+ apps in Splunkbase
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Heavy (varies, 500MB+)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Via SOAR integration (external)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: $3,000 - $5,000
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 4-8 (managed cloud)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 6 (HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, GDPR, ISO27001)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 15+ (threat detection, predictive analytics, correlation, clustering)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Unlimited (license-dependent)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 1 (24/7 enterprise SLA)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 120 months (10 years)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 700+ integrations
Default Data Retention (included in pricing)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Sampling-dependent (configurable)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 12 (HIPAA, PCI, SOC2, NIST)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: $4,500+ (minimum commitment)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Enterprise Security module, threat detection, compliance dashboards
Base Monthly Pricing (1GB/day ingestion)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 400+ built-in detections
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Limited (add-on required)
Maximum Data Ingestion Per Day (Enterprise)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Unlimited (licensing dependent)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 150+ (broader enterprise data ecosystem)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 20+ (anomaly detection, forecasting, UEBA)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 2,500+ (proprietary, less open)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: $3,600 ($120/day minimum)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 2,880 (4-8 weeks average)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 30 (upgradeable to unlimited)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Requires add-on license ($X additional)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 1,024 GB/day (1TB)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 75% of new users need training
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: Hybrid (on-premise, cloud, multi-cloud)
PagerDuty: N/A | Splunk: 500+ integrations
How to choose between PagerDuty and Splunk
PagerDuty vs Splunk — Structured Comparison Data
Machine-readable comparison dataset for PagerDuty vs Splunk. Contains 132 attribute comparisons, 5 FAQ pairs.
PagerDuty vs Splunk — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for PagerDuty vs Splunk.
Yes. Splunk can send alerts to PagerDuty through native integration or webhooks. PagerDuty then handles routing and on-call escalation, while Splunk provides the underlying analytics and root cause investigation. This is a common enterprise pattern where Splunk detects issues and PagerDuty manages the response.
Which platform is better for log analysis?
Splunk is significantly better for log analysis. It's designed to ingest, index, and search billions of log events with a powerful query language (SPL). PagerDuty doesn't process logs directly—it only receives and routes alerts. For forensics, compliance auditing, or security investigation, Splunk is the correct choice.
Yes, via Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps), which Splunk acquired in 2020. However, standalone PagerDuty remains more mature and feature-rich for on-call management. Many enterprises use PagerDuty even with Splunk because PagerDuty's scheduling and escalation workflows are more advanced.
Why is Splunk more expensive than PagerDuty?
Splunk charges per gigabyte of data ingested per day, which scales with your log volume. Processing 1TB/day costs $50k-$150k annually. PagerDuty charges per user. Since most enterprises generate terabytes of logs monthly, Splunk's TCO quickly exceeds PagerDuty's per-seat model. Careful capacity planning and data filtering are essential for Splunk cost management.
PagerDuty deploys in 2-4 weeks with straightforward integrations to your existing monitoring tools. Splunk requires 4-12 weeks and involves data pipeline design, log parsing configuration, and team training. If time-to-value is critical, PagerDuty is the faster choice.
How to Choose Between PagerDuty and Splunk
Primary Function: PagerDuty has Incident response & on-call management, while Splunk has Data analytics & log aggregation.
Starting Price (Annual): PagerDuty has $1,500 (5 users), while Splunk has $4,500 (500GB/day ingest).
Consider: Data Ingestion Capacity (Standard)
Data Ingestion Capacity (Standard): PagerDuty has Alerts per minute: 10,000+, while Splunk has GB/day: 500GB-5TB+.
Consider: Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) Focus
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) Focus: PagerDuty has Primary: Orchestration & routing, while Splunk has Primary: Root cause analysis.
Integration Ecosystem: PagerDuty has 700+ integrations (monitoring tools), while Splunk has 600+ apps & add-ons.
Typical Implementation Time: PagerDuty has 2-4 weeks, while Splunk has 4-12 weeks.
Machine Learning Capabilities: PagerDuty has Event correlation & anomaly detection (basic), while Splunk has Advanced ML for outlier detection & forecasting.