Sentry
Error monitoring you actually act on.
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Book free discovery call →Quick summary of Sentry
Sentry is an application monitoring and error tracking platform founded in 2008 by David Cramer and Chris Jennings as an open-source project. It's the dominant error tracking tool for production applications, used by 4M+ developers and 100K+ organisations including Disney, Microsoft, and Atlassian. Core features: real-time error and exception capture, stack traces with source maps, performance monitoring (slow endpoints, Core Web Vitals), session replay (watch user sessions that triggered errors), distributed tracing, profiling, release health tracking, and cron job monitoring. Best for any production application where unmonitored errors are unacceptable — startups to enterprises across web, mobile, backend, and serverless stacks. Developer tier is free with 5K errors/month; Team is $26/month for 50K errors, Business $80/month, Enterprise custom. Sentry is also fully open-source and self-hostable. Direct competitors: Rollbar (simpler error tracking), Bugsnag (acquired by SmartBear), Honeybadger (indie-friendly alternative), LogRocket (session replay focus), Datadog (full observability suite, pricier), New Relic (enterprise APM). Sentry wins on ecosystem and product breadth; Honeybadger wins on simplicity for indie projects.
⏱ 30-second verdict
- Install in 5 minutes, see production errors immediately
- Free tier covers most indie SaaS for months
- Feature creep adds complexity; you'll only use 30% of the product
About
Captures exceptions across your stack with stack traces, user context, and release tags. Performance monitoring + session replay are now bundled.
🎯 Why it's useful
You will not know about bugs your users hit unless you have Sentry or equivalent. The free tier covers most early-stage teams.
💜 Our take
Session Replay — watching the literal browser session of a user hitting an error — turns vague bug reports into 5-minute fixes.
Key Features
Integrations
✓ Best for
Full-stack developers and small engineering teams building web or mobile apps who need to quickly identify and fix production errors. Solo founders and early-stage startups can start free and scale as they grow.
✗ Not ideal for
Teams with minimal error rates or those primarily building backend-only services without user-facing applications. Projects with extreme privacy requirements may want self-hosted alternatives due to Sentry's cloud-based processing.
How indie founders use Sentry
Production error tracking
Capture unhandled exceptions in your backend and frontend with full context. Get notified before users complain. Indie-founder-essential.
Performance monitoring
Find slow API endpoints, slow DB queries, and frontend Core Web Vitals problems. Fix performance issues you wouldn't otherwise know about.
Session replay for hard bugs
When users report a bug you can't reproduce, watch the recorded session that triggered the error. Saves hours of 'can you try again' back-and-forth.
Release health tracking
Tie errors to specific git commits and deployments. Spot regressions immediately when a new deploy spikes error rates.
Sentry is the error tracker that's been around forever and is still the right answer. If your app is in production and you don't know about exceptions until users tweet at you, install Sentry. Today. Free tier covers most indie SaaS for months. The core product is error monitoring. Throw an exception, Sentry captures the stack trace, request context, user info, browser/OS details, and surfaces it in a clean dashboard. Group by error type, see how many users are affected, link to the exact line of code. The integration is one config call and a few minutes of setup. For most stacks (Next.js, Node, Python, Ruby, Go, mobile), the SDK is mature and battle-tested. The product has expanded a lot. Performance monitoring (slow API endpoints, slow DB queries, frontend Core Web Vitals). Session Replay (watch the user session that triggered an error). Code Coverage integration. Profiling. Cron monitoring (alert when a scheduled job doesn't run). They've gone from 'error tracker' to 'observability platform' over the last few years, which is good if you need it and ignorable if you don't. The free tier is real. 5K errors per month, 10K performance events, basic session replay. Most indie SaaS sit comfortably on free until they hit moderate traffic. Team at $26/month for 50K errors is the next step. Beyond that, Business at $80/month and Enterprise for the rest. My actual experience: I've used Sentry on every production project for years. The 5-minute setup-to-value loop is unmatched. Errors that would otherwise live in browser console logs (i.e. nowhere you'd see them) show up in your inbox with full context. The 'releases' feature ties errors to specific git commits so you can immediately see which deploy broke things. The alternatives: Rollbar, Bugsnag, Honeybadger are all fine and similar. LogRocket adds session replay as its primary feature. OpenReplay is open-source. Datadog has error tracking as one feature of a much larger (and pricier) platform. For 95% of indie founders, Sentry is the obvious choice. Install it on day one.
Pricing
Developer
- ✓5K errors/month
- ✓10K performance events
- ✓50 replays/month
- ✓30-day data retention
Team
- ✓50K errors/month
- ✓Unlimited team members
- ✓90-day retention
- ✓Performance monitoring
Business
- ✓Custom volume
- ✓Profiling included
- ✓Insights dashboards
- ✓Advanced filtering
Enterprise
- ✓Volume pricing
- ✓SSO + audit log
- ✓SLA + dedicated support
- ✓Custom data retention
Free up to 5,000 errors/month · Pro from $29/mo · Business from $99/mo · Volume discounts available
Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry free?
Yes. The Developer tier includes 5K errors, 10K performance events, and 50 session replays per month with 30-day retention. Most early-stage SaaS never exceed it. Team at $26/month bumps to 50K errors and adds more retention.
Sentry vs Rollbar vs Bugsnag, which is best?
All three do error tracking well. Sentry has the largest ecosystem, most integrations, and broadest product surface (performance, replay, profiling). Rollbar is simpler and cheaper at small scale. Bugsnag is solid but acquired by SmartBear (whose track record post-acquisition is mixed). Default to Sentry unless you have a specific reason.
Should I use Sentry or LogRocket?
Sentry for error tracking with optional session replay. LogRocket for session replay with error tracking as a side feature. If errors are your primary concern, Sentry. If you specifically want to watch user sessions, LogRocket. Many teams use both.
How do I install Sentry on Next.js?
Run npx @sentry/wizard and follow the prompts. It auto-generates your sentry.client.config.ts, sentry.server.config.ts, and wires up error capture in API routes and Server Components. Takes 5 minutes; works great with App Router.
Does Sentry capture frontend errors?
Yes. The browser SDK captures unhandled exceptions, Promise rejections, and Core Web Vitals. With Session Replay enabled, you can watch the user session leading up to a frontend crash. Indispensable for debugging mobile-only or browser-specific bugs.
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