Oncall vs Robusta
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Oncall | Robusta |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 28 · At risk | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,258 | ★ 3,101 |
| First released | 2017 | 2021 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty | Datadog, PagerDuty |
What are Oncall and Robusta?
Oncall
Oncall is a calendar tool for managing on-call schedules and rotations across teams. Developed at LinkedIn, it integrates with paging systems to ensure the right engineer is reachable at any time.
- Calendar-based rotations
- Team and event management
- Paging system integration
- REST API
Robusta
Robusta enhances Prometheus alerts for Kubernetes with enriched context, automated troubleshooting, and notifications to Slack and other channels. It helps teams understand and respond to cluster issues faster.
- Enriched Kubernetes alerts
- Automated remediation playbooks
- Slack and Teams notifications
- Crash and OOM diagnostics
Oncall vs Robusta: key differences
Both projects are written in Python. Licensing differs — BSD-2-Clause for Oncall versus MIT for Robusta. Oncall is the more established project (first released 2017), while Robusta arrived in 2021. Robusta has the considerably larger community, at 3,101 GitHub stars versus 1,258. Oncall lists first-class Docker deployment; Robusta does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Oncall if…
- Simple scheduling model
- Battle-tested at LinkedIn
Watch out for
- Needs Iris for actual paging
- UI is utilitarian
Choose Robusta if…
- Makes alerts actionable
- Strong Kubernetes focus
Watch out for
- Kubernetes only
- Best with Prometheus already running
Frequently asked questions
Is Oncall or Robusta better?
Neither is universally better. Robusta has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Oncall and Robusta free and open-source?
Yes. Oncall is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Robusta under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Oncall and Robusta with Docker?
Oncall: yes. Robusta: check the project docs for container support.