Datadog charges for users who are active in On-Call, specifically those who are in schedules, escalation policies, or have notification preferences configured. When team members leave your organization or no longer need On-Call access, you’ll want to remove them to avoid unnecessary charges.

This guide shows you how to:

• Identify which users are being charged for On-Call
• Remove users from schedules and escalation policies
• Clean up notification preferences and team memberships
• Ensure coverage gaps don’t disrupt your incident response

Who should use this guide

This guide is for administrators and team leads who manage Datadog On-Call billing and user access.

Offboarding Teams

If you no longer need a Datadog Team in On-Call, you can quickly offboard it. The team will remain in Datadog, but it will no longer appear as a pageable entity in On-Call.

Go to On-Call, pick the team to offboard, and scroll to the Danger Zone. Confirm offboarding. The team and its assets (schedules, escalation policies) stay intact—they’re just removed from On-Call.

Offboarding users

Datadog charges for users who are actively configured in On-Call. Before removing anyone, identify which users are currently being billed by checking if they have:

• Schedule assignments: Users assigned to any On-Call schedule
• Escalation policy membership: Users included in escalation policies (either directly or as team members)
• Notification preferences: Users with On-Call notification methods configured (SMS, voice, push notifications)

You can find this information in the On-Call settings for each team and by reviewing individual user profiles. This is also available in the Plan & Usage page, specifically under “Seat Management”.

Replace coverage before removing users

Before removing users from On-Call, make sure someone else can handle their responsibilities to avoid gaps in incident response.

Update schedules

For each schedule where the departing user is assigned:

1. Find replacement coverage: Assign another team member to cover their shifts
2. Update the schedule: Replace the departing user with the new person
3. Check for gaps: Make sure all time slots are still covered

Update escalation policies

If the departing user is in any escalation policies:

1. Replace individual assignments: Remove the user and add their replacement
2. Use team-based escalation: Consider escalating to teams instead of individuals
3. Test the changes: Make sure escalations still work properly

Remove user notification preferences

If the user is still part of your organization you can ask them to remove their Notification Preferences in their On-Call profile by visiting On-Call > Settings > My On-Call Profile.

As an admin, you can also manage this yourself by navigating to On-Call > Settings > Notification Preferences. Find the appropriate user and remove their notification preferences as needed. You will need the “On-Call Admin” permission to perform this.

Note, Notification Preferences make a user pageable and therefore billable. Having only contact methods (for example, push notifications) defined is a non-billable action and won’t incur charges.