Is there a free Amion alternative?

Not one that also enforces clinical rules: free tools in this category publish schedules rather than check them. MedAligna starts at $99 per month per location with a 14-day free trial and no card, which is the closest honest answer.

Does MedAligna replace Amion's on-call board?

Yes. A revocable public link shows who is on call now, who is second and who is backup, with no account required and no search-engine indexing. It is the Amion use case with an escalation chain behind it.

Can we import our Amion schedule?

Yes, from CSV: your staff, and your assignments. The import runs every row through the same rules a manager is held to, so anything that breaches one (an expired licence, a rest violation) is reported with its reason rather than quietly written in. Fix it or override it deliberately; either way you know before the rota is live.

What does Amion cost?

Amion does not publish its pricing, so we will not guess at it. MedAligna costs $99, $149 or $249 per month per location, and that is on our pricing page rather than behind a form.

Does Amion enforce ACGME duty hours?

It publishes a schedule rather than checking one, so the four-week averaging that ACGME requires is not something it evaluates. Programmes running Amion typically track duty hours alongside it, in a spreadsheet. MedAligna models the averaging window directly: 80 hours over four weeks is expressed as 80 over four weeks, so a compliant front-loaded rotation passes and a block that breaches the average is flagged.

Can staff swap shifts in Amion?

Not through the tool in the way modern staff expect: there is no mobile swap or claim workflow, so those conversations happen in group chats and corridors, unrecorded. In MedAligna a swap is rule-checked before it is even offered to a counterparty, so nothing reaches a manager that would have to be refused.

Will we lose our on-call board if we switch?

No. That is the one thing Amion did completely, and MedAligna keeps it: a revocable public link showing who is on call now, who is second and who is backup, with no login and no search-engine indexing. Send the new URL to whoever had the old one bookmarked.

How long does it take to move off Amion?

An afternoon for a single department. Import your staff and next month's schedule from CSV, set your rules once, review whatever the import refused, and publish. We would suggest running both for one period rather than cutting over a live rota in a single step.

How much does Amion cost?

Amion's desktop scheduling licence is listed at $449 as a one-time purchase (amion.com/order, as of July 2026), and its hospital-wide Enterprise tier is quoted rather than published. That low, one-time price is a real strength; the trade is that it publishes a schedule rather than checking one. MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per location per month.

No. The desktop licence is a one-time $449 purchase (amion.com/order, July 2026), and many departments access it through Doximity. It is inexpensive, but it is not free, and the cost is not the reason programmes move off it — duty-hour compliance and the absence of a staff phone experience are.

Is Amion connected to Doximity?

Amion is distributed to physicians through Doximity (doximity.hospitalsolutions.com/amion, July 2026), which is part of how it reached its installed base in academic hospitals and residency programmes. It remains a desktop scheduling program that publishes to a web page.

Does Amion have a mobile app for swaps and open shifts?

Its heritage is a desktop program that publishes a read-only schedule, so the modern swap-and-claim-from-a-phone workflow is not what it was built for; those conversations tend to happen in group chats. In MedAligna a swap is rule-checked before it is offered to a counterparty, so nothing reaches a manager that would have to be undone.

Will we lose our Amion on-call board if we switch?

No. That is the one thing Amion does completely, and MedAligna keeps it: a revocable public link showing who is on call now, who is second and who is backup, with no login and no search indexing. Send the new URL to whoever had the old one bookmarked.

Comparison · verified July 2026

Amion alternatives, compared honestly

Amion is a long-established on-call scheduling and physician directory tool, widely used by hospital departments and residency programmes. It publishes the call schedule and answers the question of who is covering. It does not enforce clinical rules, does not check credentials, and its interface predates the smartphone.

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At a glance

Amion's core job (publishing who is on call, to anyone, instantly) it does completely. That is why it survives in hospitals that have replaced everything around it.
It publishes a schedule; it does not check one. No credential blocking, no minimum rest, no ACGME averaging, no overtime projection, no ratio compliance.
It predates the smartphone: staff cannot swap a shift or claim an open one from a phone.
The main reasons departments leave are duty-hour compliance for residents and the absence of a staff mobile experience.
MedAligna keeps the public on-call board, a revocable link with no login, and adds the rules. $99–$249 per location per month, published, with a 14-day trial.

What Amion genuinely got right

Amion solved one problem completely, decades before anyone else took it seriously: it answers the question of who is on call, to anyone who needs to know, instantly and without ceremony. That single page (the department, the date, the name, the pager number) is the reason it is still installed in hospitals that have replaced everything else around it.

It is also cheap, it is fast, and the people who use it every day know exactly where everything is. Those are not small things, and any comparison that sneers at Amion is written by someone who has never had to find the on-call surgeon at two in the morning.

What it was never built to do

Amion publishes a schedule. It does not check one. There is no concept of a licence with an expiry, no credential blocking, no minimum-rest rule, no ACGME averaging window, no overtime projection, no ratio compliance. If a chief resident builds a block that breaches the eighty-hour average, Amion prints it without comment, because printing it is the job it was designed for.

The other thing it never had is the phone. Staff cannot swap a shift, claim an open one, or request time off from a phone. Those workflows happen where they have always happened: in a group chat, on a whiteboard, or by walking down the corridor to find someone.

Which is fine, right up until the moment it is not. The question is not whether Amion is bad; it is whether you now need the things it does not do.

Duty hours are the usual reason programmes leave

ACGME limits work to eighty hours per week averaged over four weeks. Amion has no concept of an averaging window, so a chief resident building a block is doing the arithmetic herself, in a spreadsheet, alongside the schedule. That works until it does not, and the moment it does not is a review finding rather than an inconvenience.

Credentials live somewhere else entirely

In most departments running Amion, licence and certification expiry is tracked in a separate spreadsheet, a separate system, or somebody's calendar reminders. Which means the schedule and the compliance data never meet, and the only thing standing between an expired licence and a shift is a human remembering at the right moment.

The phone is where staff actually live

A schedule that cannot be swapped, claimed or notified from a phone pushes all of that traffic into group chats and corridor conversations. It still gets done; it just gets done by people, unrecorded, and the published schedule slowly stops matching reality.

What it actually costs

Amion is cheap, and that is not the argument

Most pages in this category argue about price. This one cannot, honestly: Amion is one of the least expensive tools in healthcare scheduling, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of thing that gets a comparison page distrusted.

Amion (OnCall)

$449

A one-time desktop licence (amion.com/order, as of July 2026), distributed to many departments through Doximity. Not a monthly bill.

Amion Enterprise

Quote

The hospital-wide tier is quoted rather than published.

MedAligna

$99–249/mo

Per location, per month, published, month to month, with a 14-day trial and no card.

So the question a department should ask is not 'is Amion expensive'. It plainly is not. The question is what the low price buys and what it does not. It buys a desktop program that builds a call schedule and publishes it to a web page anyone can read — which it does completely, and which is why it has outlasted a decade of newer tools around it.

What it does not buy is a schedule that checks itself. There is no duty-hour averaging window, no credential expiry that blocks an assignment, no exclusion screening, and no phone-first workflow for swaps and open shifts. MedAligna costs more per month than a one-time desktop licence precisely because those checks, and the mobile experience, are the product. If your programme has grown into needing them, that is the trade you are weighing — not a cheaper tool against a dearer one, but a publisher against an enforcer.

Amion desktop licence price from amion.com/order; distribution via Doximity from doximity.hospitalsolutions.com/amion; both verified as of July 2026. Enterprise pricing is not published by Amion.

Which one is right for you

These are not competing answers to the same question. They are answers to different questions, and it is worth knowing which one you are actually asking.

Stay with Amion if…

You need a published call schedule and a directory, and genuinely nothing else.
Your department does not track credentials in the scheduling tool and has no plans to.
Your residents are comfortably inside duty-hour limits and the block is stable.
The people using it are happy, which is worth more than 'modern', and always will be.

Look at MedAligna if…

You have residents and the four-week duty-hour average is a real exposure.
You want credential expiry to block an assignment rather than send an email.
Your staff want to swap, claim and see their rota on a phone.
You want call equity settled by a count everyone can see rather than a memory.
You want to know the price without a phone call.

MedAligna vs Amion, row by row

Binary, verifiable facts only. No adjectives; an opinion is not a comparison.

Capability	MedAligna	Amion
Publishes an on-call schedule	Yes	Yes
Public who's-on-call board, no login	Yes	Yes
Blocks a shift when a licence has expired	Yes	No
Federal exclusion (OIG) screening	Yes	No
Minimum-rest and overtime enforcement	Yes	No
ACGME duty hours averaged over four weeks	Yes	No
On-call equity tracking (nights, weekends, holidays)	Yes	No
Escalation chain published on the on-call board	Yes	No
Staff mobile app: swaps, open shifts, time off	Yes	No
Calendar sync (Google / Outlook / Apple)	Yes	Partial
Published pricing	$99–249/mo per location	Not published

Amion is a trademark of its owner. MedAligna is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amion. Comparison compiled from publicly available documentation and pricing pages, verified July 2026. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

The honest bit

You should probably stay on Amion if…

Amion is a good fit for a narrow job, and if that job is your job, switching costs you time and gains you nothing.

All you need is a published call schedule and a directory, and nobody is asking for anything else.
Your department does not track credentials in the scheduling tool, and does not want to.
Your residents are not near the duty-hour limits, and your schedule is stable month to month.
The people who use it are happy, and 'happy' is genuinely worth more than 'modern'.

We would rather you stayed and told someone we were straight with you than switched and regretted it. This category is small, and reputations travel.

How to choose residency and on-call scheduling software

For a programme director, the criteria that matter are duty hours, credentials, the phone, and the board. Here they are, with the one where Amion is genuinely hard to beat.

01Does it model the ACGME 80-hour average, or just print the schedule?

ACGME limits work to 80 hours per week averaged over four weeks. A tool that publishes without evaluating the average leaves the arithmetic to a chief resident and a spreadsheet — which works until a review finds the week it did not.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna models the averaging window directly: a compliant front-loaded rotation passes, and a block that breaches the four-week mean is flagged before publish.

02Does an expired licence block the assignment?

In most Amion departments, credential expiry lives in a separate spreadsheet, so the schedule and the compliance data never meet.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna checks each required credential against the end of the shift and refuses the assignment, and screens against the federal OIG exclusion list on every roster.

03Can staff swap and claim from a phone?

A tool that predates the smartphone pushes swaps and open-shift offers into group chats and corridors, unrecorded, and the published schedule slowly stops matching reality.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna staff carry the rota on their phone; a swap is rule-checked before it is offered, so nothing reaches you that would have to be refused.

04Do you keep a public who's-on-call board?

This is Amion's masterpiece: a page anyone can open to see who is covering, no login. Do not give it up to gain the rest.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna keeps exactly that — a revocable public link showing first call, second and backup, no account, not indexed — with the escalation chain behind it. On this criterion, Amion is genuinely excellent, and any honest comparison says so.

If you do move

01
Bring your people and your schedule across
Amion exports to CSV, and MedAligna imports both: your staff (names, roles, contract hours) and next month's assignments. Rows the rules refuse are reported with the reason rather than forced, which is usually the first time a programme sees what its old tool was letting through.
02
Bring the rules with you
This is the part Amion never held: minimum rest, ACGME averaging, credential requirements. Set them once in MedAligna and every future schedule is checked against them.
03
Keep the board
The public who's-on-call page carries over: a revocable link, no login, first and second call and backup. Send the new URL to whoever had the old one bookmarked.

When a programme outgrows the desktop

Residency near the cap

A busy block pushes residents toward the 80-hour four-week average, and the tool prints it without comment.

The averaging window is modelled; a breach is flagged before the rota goes live, not found in a review.

Attendings asking for their phones

Swaps happen by text and whiteboard, and the published call schedule drifts from what is actually happening.

Swaps and open shifts move to the phone, rule-checked before they are offered, and the board always matches reality.

New GME compliance ask

The programme is now expected to show credential currency and exclusion screening it used to track by hand.

Credential blocking and OIG screening run on every assignment, with the reason written on the cell.

Amion questions, answered

Is there a free Amion alternative?: Not one that also enforces clinical rules: free tools in this category publish schedules rather than check them. MedAligna starts at $99 per month per location with a 14-day free trial and no card, which is the closest honest answer.
Does MedAligna replace Amion's on-call board?: Yes. A revocable public link shows who is on call now, who is second and who is backup, with no account required and no search-engine indexing. It is the Amion use case with an escalation chain behind it.
Can we import our Amion schedule?: Yes, from CSV: your staff, and your assignments. The import runs every row through the same rules a manager is held to, so anything that breaches one (an expired licence, a rest violation) is reported with its reason rather than quietly written in. Fix it or override it deliberately; either way you know before the rota is live.
What does Amion cost?: Amion does not publish its pricing, so we will not guess at it. MedAligna costs $99, $149 or $249 per month per location, and that is on our pricing page rather than behind a form.
Does Amion enforce ACGME duty hours?: It publishes a schedule rather than checking one, so the four-week averaging that ACGME requires is not something it evaluates. Programmes running Amion typically track duty hours alongside it, in a spreadsheet. MedAligna models the averaging window directly: 80 hours over four weeks is expressed as 80 over four weeks, so a compliant front-loaded rotation passes and a block that breaches the average is flagged.
Can staff swap shifts in Amion?: Not through the tool in the way modern staff expect: there is no mobile swap or claim workflow, so those conversations happen in group chats and corridors, unrecorded. In MedAligna a swap is rule-checked before it is even offered to a counterparty, so nothing reaches a manager that would have to be refused.
Will we lose our on-call board if we switch?: No. That is the one thing Amion did completely, and MedAligna keeps it: a revocable public link showing who is on call now, who is second and who is backup, with no login and no search-engine indexing. Send the new URL to whoever had the old one bookmarked.
How long does it take to move off Amion?: An afternoon for a single department. Import your staff and next month's schedule from CSV, set your rules once, review whatever the import refused, and publish. We would suggest running both for one period rather than cutting over a live rota in a single step.
How much does Amion cost?: Amion's desktop scheduling licence is listed at $449 as a one-time purchase (amion.com/order, as of July 2026), and its hospital-wide Enterprise tier is quoted rather than published. That low, one-time price is a real strength; the trade is that it publishes a schedule rather than checking one. MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per location per month.
Is Amion free?: No. The desktop licence is a one-time $449 purchase (amion.com/order, July 2026), and many departments access it through Doximity. It is inexpensive, but it is not free, and the cost is not the reason programmes move off it — duty-hour compliance and the absence of a staff phone experience are.
Is Amion connected to Doximity?: Amion is distributed to physicians through Doximity (doximity.hospitalsolutions.com/amion, July 2026), which is part of how it reached its installed base in academic hospitals and residency programmes. It remains a desktop scheduling program that publishes to a web page.
Does Amion have a mobile app for swaps and open shifts?: Its heritage is a desktop program that publishes a read-only schedule, so the modern swap-and-claim-from-a-phone workflow is not what it was built for; those conversations tend to happen in group chats. In MedAligna a swap is rule-checked before it is offered to a counterparty, so nothing reaches a manager that would have to be undone.
Will we lose our Amion on-call board if we switch?: No. That is the one thing Amion does completely, and MedAligna keeps it: a revocable public link showing who is on call now, who is second and who is backup, with no login and no search indexing. Send the new URL to whoever had the old one bookmarked.

The terms behind the decision

For the programme coordinator handed a scheduling problem she did not ask for.

Amion (OnCall): Amion is the web-published face of a desktop scheduling program historically called OnCall. Schedules are built on the desktop and published to an Amion web page; many departments reach it through Doximity.
ACGME duty hours: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education limits residents to 80 hours per week averaged over four weeks. Because it is a mean, a compliant month can contain a heavy week — which is exactly why publishing without evaluating the average is a gap.
GME: Graduate Medical Education: the residency and fellowship training programmes ACGME accredits, where duty-hour compliance is a survey finding rather than an internal preference.
Public on-call board: A page anyone can open to see who is covering right now, without an account. Amion is known for this; MedAligna keeps it as a revocable link with first call, second and backup, and adds a published escalation chain.
Credential wallet: A store of licences and certifications owned by the clinician, not the employer. She uploads a licence once and every employer sees the current version; in MedAligna the employer can read it but cannot edit or delete it, enforced by the database.