Oncall vs Sensu Go
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Oncall | Sensu Go |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 28 · At risk | 82 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Language | Python | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,258 | ★ 1,112 |
| First released | 2017 | 2018 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty | Datadog, PagerDuty |
What are Oncall and Sensu Go?
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
Sensu Go
Sensu Go is a monitoring event pipeline that treats monitoring as code. It collects check results from agents, processes them through filters and handlers, and integrates with metrics and alerting backends.
- Monitoring as code workflow
- Event filtering and handlers
- Agent and agentless checks
- Built-in metrics support
Oncall vs Sensu Go: key differences
Oncall is written in Python, while Sensu Go is built with Go. Licensing differs — BSD-2-Clause for Oncall versus MIT for Sensu Go. Oncall is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Sensu Go.
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 Sensu Go if…
- Declarative configuration
- Flexible event pipeline
Watch out for
- Smaller community after acquisition
- Concepts take time to learn
Frequently asked questions
Is Oncall or Sensu Go better?
Neither is universally better. Oncall has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Oncall and Sensu Go free and open-source?
Yes. Oncall is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Sensu Go under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Oncall and Sensu Go with Docker?
Oncall: yes. Sensu Go: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Oncall or Sensu Go?
Oncall has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Sensu Go. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.