Grafana OnCall vs Karma
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Grafana OnCall | Karma |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 15 · At risk | 87 · Excellent |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Python | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,886 | ★ 2,679 |
| First released | 2021 | 2017 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty, Opsgenie | PagerDuty |
What are Grafana OnCall and Karma?
Grafana OnCall
Grafana OnCall is an on-call management tool that handles alert escalation, schedules, and notifications across phone, SMS, Slack, and more. It deduplicates and routes alerts so the right person is paged.
- On-call schedules and rotations
- Escalation chains
- Phone, SMS, and chat alerts
- Alert grouping and routing
Karma
Karma is a web dashboard that aggregates and displays alerts from one or more Alertmanager instances. It provides grouping, filtering, and silencing in a single clean view for on-call engineers.
- Multi-Alertmanager aggregation
- Alert grouping and filtering
- Inline silence management
- Auto-refreshing display
Grafana OnCall vs Karma: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Grafana OnCall's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Karma is actively maintained. Grafana OnCall is written in Python, while Karma is built with TypeScript. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Grafana OnCall versus Apache-2.0 for Karma. Karma is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Grafana OnCall. Karma is the more established project (first released 2017), while Grafana OnCall arrived in 2021.
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana OnCall if…
- Strong PagerDuty alternative
- Integrates with Grafana
Watch out for
- Several components to deploy
- Telephony needs external provider
Choose Karma if…
- Clear at-a-glance overview
- Lightweight
Watch out for
- Read-mostly view
- Requires Alertmanager
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana OnCall or Karma better?
Neither is universally better. Grafana OnCall has the larger community, while Karma is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grafana OnCall and Karma free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana OnCall is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Karma under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana OnCall and Karma with Docker?
Grafana OnCall: yes. Karma: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana OnCall or Karma?
Karma has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Grafana OnCall. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.