Grafana OnCall vs Mailrise
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 | Mailrise |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 15 · At risk | 48 · Fair |
| Status | Archived | Actively maintained |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,886 | ★ 1,592 |
| First released | 2021 | 2021 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty, Opsgenie | PagerDuty |
What are Grafana OnCall and Mailrise?
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
Mailrise
Mailrise acts as an SMTP server that receives email alerts from legacy systems and forwards them as push notifications through Apprise. It bridges old monitoring tools to modern notification channels.
- SMTP-to-push bridge
- Apprise integration
- Many notification targets
- Tiny footprint
Grafana OnCall vs Mailrise: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Grafana OnCall's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Mailrise is actively maintained. Both projects are written in Python. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Grafana OnCall versus MIT for Mailrise. Mailrise is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Grafana OnCall. Grafana OnCall has the considerably larger community, at 3,886 GitHub stars versus 1,592.
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 Mailrise if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.6k GitHub stars)
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana OnCall or Mailrise better?
Neither is universally better. Grafana OnCall has the larger community, while Mailrise is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grafana OnCall and Mailrise free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana OnCall is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Mailrise under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana OnCall and Mailrise with Docker?
Grafana OnCall: yes. Mailrise: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana OnCall or Mailrise?
Mailrise 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.