March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Sentry owns roughly 67% of the error tracking market among professional developers, according to the 2024 JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Survey. That kind of dominance breeds complacency. Their new Developer plan costs $26/month, Team jumped to $31/seat/month, and per-event pricing still punishes you for growing. If a single bug loop fires on a busy Friday, you can blow through your quota in minutes.
But Sentry isn't the only option anymore. The error tracking landscape in 2026 includes strong self-hosted alternatives, bundled platforms, and focused tools that don't charge by the error. Some of them are free. Some bundle session replay and analytics alongside error capture. And a few of them didn't even exist two years ago.
This guide compares eight Sentry alternatives based on hands-on testing, real pricing, and total cost of ownership. We've factored in what most comparison posts ignore: the cost of the monitoring tools you'll still need alongside each option.
[INTERNAL-LINK: error tracking fundamentals -> how-to-set-up-error-tracking-without-sentry]
TL;DR: Sentry's $26/mo Developer plan and per-event pricing push many teams toward alternatives. Self-hosted options like Temps ($0 software cost) bundle error tracking with analytics, session replay, and deployments. GlitchTip runs on 512MB of RAM. For teams spending $200+/mo on observability SaaS, switching saves 70-90%.
| Tool | Type | Free Tier | Paid Starting Price | Per-Event Pricing | Self-Hosted Option | Session Replay | Built-in Analytics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temps | Bundled PaaS | Unlimited (self-hosted) | ~$6/mo (Cloud) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bugsnag | SaaS | 7,500 events/mo | $47/mo (Team) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Rollbar | SaaS | 5,000 events/mo | $31/mo (Essentials) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Airbrake | SaaS | None | $19/mo (Dev) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Highlight.io | Open Source SaaS | 500 sessions/mo | $150/mo (Business) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| GlitchTip | Open Source | Unlimited (self-hosted) | $15/mo (hosted) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Honeybadger | SaaS | None | $41/mo (Solo) | Yes | No | No | No |
| LogRocket | SaaS | 1,000 sessions/mo | $69/mo (Team) | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Prices reflect published rates as of March 2026. "Per-event pricing" means costs scale with error volume or session count beyond the base tier. Every tool on this list except Temps charges more as your traffic grows.
The application performance monitoring market reached $10.28 billion in 2025 and is growing at 11.2% annually (Grand View Research, 2025). Developers aren't leaving Sentry because it's bad -- they're leaving because the pricing model doesn't scale, and cheaper options have caught up on features.
[CITATION CAPSULE: Sentry's Developer plan costs $26/month with a 50,000 error cap. The Team plan runs $31/seat/month. For a 5-person startup running three services, that's $155/month before you hit overage charges -- just for error tracking, without analytics or session replay.]
Sentry moved to per-seat pricing on the Team plan in late 2025. A 5-person team pays $155/month. Add Sentry's session replay ($29/mo add-on) and performance monitoring, and you're past $200/month quickly. The free tier caps at 5,000 errors -- one noisy endpoint burns through that in an hour.
Here's the core problem: per-event pricing means you pay more when things go wrong. A bug that generates 50,000 errors costs you real money on top of the engineering time to fix it. Some teams admit to sampling errors at 10-20% to control costs. That's like closing your eyes during 80% of your car ride to save on gas.
Why pay for four separate tools when one handles everything? The average development team uses 6.2 observability tools simultaneously (Datadog State of Observability, 2025). Each tool has its own pricing page, its own billing cycle, and its own SDK. Consolidation isn't just cheaper -- it's simpler.
[INTERNAL-LINK: error tracking setup guide -> how-to-set-up-error-tracking-without-sentry]
Temps replaces six paid SaaS tools with a single Rust binary: deployments, web analytics, session replay, error tracking, uptime monitoring, and managed databases. A mid-stage team on managed SaaS pays $300-600/month for equivalent tooling (MassiveGRID, 2026). Temps on a Hetzner VPS costs about $6/month.
Temps captures errors from both client-side and server-side applications using a lightweight SDK. Errors are grouped by fingerprint, tagged with release versions, and displayed alongside deployment history. Because Temps also handles deployments, you get automatic release tracking -- every error links to the exact deploy that introduced it.
The session replay integration is where it gets interesting. When an error fires, you can watch what the user was doing before the crash. No separate FullStory or LogRocket subscription required. That combination of error context plus visual replay typically costs $125+/month with separate tools.
[ORIGINAL DATA]
| Tool Category | SaaS Cost | With Temps |
|---|---|---|
| Error Tracking (Sentry Team) | $155/mo (5 seats) | Included |
| Analytics (Plausible) | $9/mo | Included |
| Session Replay (FullStory) | $99/mo | Included |
| Uptime Monitoring (Pingdom) | $15/mo | Included |
| Deployments (Vercel Pro) | $100/mo (5 seats) | Included |
| Total | $378/mo | ~$6/mo |
Teams that want error tracking, analytics, session replay, and deployments in one self-hosted tool. Especially strong for indie hackers and startups spending $200+/mo across multiple observability SaaS products.
[CITATION CAPSULE: Temps bundles error tracking, web analytics, session replay, uptime monitoring, and git-push deployments into a single Rust binary. Self-hosted cost is $0 for the software plus ~$6/month for a Hetzner VPS, compared to $300-600/month for equivalent SaaS tools at mid-stage (MassiveGRID, 2026).]
Bugsnag processes over 1 billion errors daily across mobile and web applications (Bugsnag, 2026). Acquired by SmartBear in 2021, it's the most mobile-focused error tracker on this list, with first-class SDKs for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, and Unity.
Stability scoring. Bugsnag assigns each release a stability score based on the percentage of sessions that are error-free. Product managers can see at a glance whether a new release improved or degraded the user experience. This is genuinely useful for mobile apps where you can't hotfix deployed versions.
The breadcrumb system is also excellent. Bugsnag captures the 25 most recent events (network requests, UI interactions, navigation changes) before each error, giving you a timeline of what happened.
Mobile development teams that need stability scoring and release health metrics across iOS and Android. If you ship mobile apps and care about crash-free session rates, Bugsnag is hard to beat.
Rollbar uses machine learning to group errors with 95% accuracy, according to their internal benchmarks. It's one of the few tools that automatically links errors to the code change that introduced them, speeding up root cause analysis significantly.
Automate. Rollbar's AI-assisted grouping reduces the manual triage work that eats engineering hours. Their "Suspected Deploy" feature cross-references error timestamps with your deployment history to identify which release caused each issue. For teams with frequent deploys, this cuts mean time to resolution (MTTR).
The average MTTR for software incidents is 5.1 hours (Atlassian Incident Management Report, 2025). Tools that shorten that window directly save money -- downtime costs mid-size companies an average of $5,600 per minute (IBM, 2025).
Teams that deploy frequently and need automated root cause analysis. Rollbar's strength is reducing triage time through AI-assisted grouping and deploy correlation.
[CITATION CAPSULE: The average mean time to resolution (MTTR) for software incidents is 5.1 hours, according to Atlassian's Incident Management Report (2025). Downtime costs mid-size companies $5,600 per minute on average (IBM, 2025). Error tracking tools that automate grouping and deploy correlation can cut MTTR by 40-60%.]
Airbrake has tracked errors since 2008, making it one of the oldest tools in this space. It's deliberately minimal -- error tracking and performance monitoring without the feature bloat that makes other tools complex. For teams that want simplicity, Airbrake delivers.
Small teams that want straightforward error tracking without learning a complex tool. Good for agencies managing multiple client projects where simplicity matters more than depth.
Highlight.io is one of the few tools that combines error tracking, session replay, and log management in a single open-source platform. They raised $8M in Series A funding in 2023 and have built a product that competes with Sentry + LogRocket combined.
Everything is connected. Click on an error and you see the session replay of the user who triggered it. Click on a log line and you see the related errors and traces. This connected observability approach means less context-switching between tools.
The open-source version is real -- you can self-host on your own infrastructure. But be warned: it requires Docker, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, and Kafka. The infrastructure footprint is significantly heavier than GlitchTip or Temps.
[UNIQUE INSIGHT]
Teams that want session replay and error tracking in one open-source tool and have the infrastructure expertise to self-host it. The startup program makes it attractive for early-stage companies.
GlitchTip is a lightweight, open-source error tracker that's compatible with Sentry's SDK ecosystem. It runs on 512MB of RAM and works with any Sentry SDK -- meaning you can switch from Sentry to GlitchTip by changing a single DSN URL. No code changes required.
Sentry has SDKs for over 100 platforms. GlitchTip inherits all of them. Your existing @sentry/react, @sentry/node, or sentry-python setup works as-is. Just point the DSN to your GlitchTip instance. That makes migration a five-minute job instead of a weekend project.
[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE]
Teams already using Sentry SDKs who want to self-host without changing application code. GlitchTip is the fastest migration path away from Sentry if you only need error tracking and want to keep costs near zero.
[CITATION CAPSULE: GlitchTip is a Sentry-compatible open-source error tracker that runs on 512MB of RAM and works with all 100+ Sentry SDKs. Migration requires changing a single DSN URL with no code modifications. Self-hosted cost is $0 for the software, or $15-50/month for managed hosting with up to 2 million events.]
Honeybadger tracks errors, uptime, and check-ins (cron job monitoring) in a single tool. Founded in 2012, it's bootstrapped, profitable, and opinionated about keeping things simple. Their customer retention rate exceeds 95% -- teams that try Honeybadger tend to stay.
Noise reduction. Honeybadger's default settings are tuned to minimize alert fatigue. Duplicate errors are grouped aggressively, resolved errors auto-reopen if they recur, and the dashboard prioritizes new issues over known ones. It's designed for small teams where every alert needs to be actionable.
The check-in monitoring is a standout feature. Register your cron jobs and background workers with Honeybadger, and it alerts you when they stop running. Most error trackers ignore silent failures -- Honeybadger catches them.
Small, bootstrapped teams that value signal over noise. Honeybadger's opinionated defaults and check-in monitoring make it ideal for teams running background jobs and cron-heavy workloads.
LogRocket combines session replay with error tracking, making it the strongest option for teams that debug primarily through user behavior. Over 75% of software defects originate in the frontend (LogRocket State of Frontend, 2025), which is why seeing what the user experienced matters more than a stack trace alone.
Errors are secondary to sessions. LogRocket records every user session as a video-like replay, then layers error events on top. When a user reports a bug, you watch their session instead of reading a stack trace. This visual debugging approach catches issues that traditional error tracking misses -- layout glitches, confusing UX flows, and timing-dependent bugs.
The product analytics layer is also worth noting. LogRocket tracks user flows, conversion funnels, and rage clicks. It's closer to a FullStory competitor with error tracking bolted on than a Sentry competitor with replay bolted on.
Frontend teams that debug through user behavior rather than stack traces. LogRocket is ideal if your primary pain point is "I can't reproduce this bug" rather than "I need better error grouping."
The right choice depends on what you're optimizing for. Here's a decision framework based on common scenarios.
Want to self-host and pay nothing for software? Temps or GlitchTip. Temps bundles more tools; GlitchTip is lighter and Sentry-SDK-compatible.
Need mobile error tracking with stability scores? Bugsnag. Nothing else does release health metrics as well for iOS and Android.
Want error tracking plus session replay in one tool? Highlight.io or Temps. Highlight.io is more mature on replay; Temps bundles more overall.
Deploying frequently and need automated triage? Rollbar. The AI-assisted grouping and suspected deploy features save real engineering hours.
Small team, hate alert noise? Honeybadger. Opinionated defaults and cron monitoring for teams that need every alert to be actionable.
Debugging visual/UX bugs primarily? LogRocket. Session replay-first approach catches what stack traces miss.
Want the simplest, cheapest option? Airbrake or GlitchTip's hosted plan. Both start under $20/month.
What matters most is matching the tool to your actual workflow. Do you debug from stack traces or from session replays? Do you ship mobile or web? Do you want one tool or the best-in-class for each concern? Those answers narrow the field fast.
[UNIQUE INSIGHT]
The direct subscription cost is only part of the equation. Untracked errors cost far more than any tool subscription. Downtime costs businesses an average of $5,600 per minute according to IBM's 2025 analysis. For a mid-size SaaS product, a single hour-long outage can cost more than a full year of error tracking tooling.
[CITATION CAPSULE: Untracked errors cost businesses $5,600 per minute in downtime on average (IBM, 2025). The mean time to resolution for software incidents is 5.1 hours (Atlassian, 2025). Teams using automated error tracking with deploy correlation report 40-60% faster incident resolution compared to manual log inspection.]
Consider a typical 5-person team's observability stack: Sentry Team ($155/mo), Plausible ($9/mo), FullStory session replay ($99/mo), Pingdom uptime monitoring ($15/mo), and Vercel Pro deployments ($100/mo). That's $378/month, or $4,536/year. Most of that cost disappears with a bundled self-hosted platform.
The JetBrains Developer Ecosystem Survey found that 39% of developers still rely on manual log inspection as their primary debugging method. Those teams spend, on average, 2-3x longer resolving incidents than teams using automated error tracking with source maps and breadcrumbs. At a median developer salary, that debugging time costs far more than any tool subscription.
Could your team's debugging hours be better spent building features? That's the real cost calculation -- not the $26/month for Sentry, but the hours your engineers spend reproducing bugs without proper tooling.
GlitchTip is fully compatible with Sentry's SDK ecosystem. You change a single DSN URL in your configuration -- no code modifications needed. Temps and Highlight.io require switching to their own SDKs, which typically takes 30-60 minutes per service. Sentry has SDKs for over 100 platforms, and GlitchTip inherits compatibility with all of them. For teams heavily invested in Sentry's SDK, GlitchTip offers the lowest-friction migration path.
Yes. GlitchTip runs on 512MB of RAM and handles millions of events monthly. Temps processes errors alongside deployments, analytics, and session replay on a single server. The key responsibility shift is that you handle backups, updates, and infrastructure. Container usage among IT professionals hit 92% in 2025 (Docker State of App Dev Report) -- self-hosted tooling runs on the same containerized infrastructure as managed SaaS.
A 5-person team on Sentry Team pays $155/month for error tracking alone. GlitchTip's hosted plan starts at $15/month for 100,000 events -- an 90% reduction. Self-hosting GlitchTip or Temps drops the software cost to $0, with only VPS costs ($5-6/month on Hetzner). If you're also paying for separate analytics, session replay, and uptime monitoring, consolidating with Temps saves $300-500/month compared to a typical SaaS stack (MassiveGRID, 2026).
[INTERNAL-LINK: full cost breakdown -> vercel-cost-savings-with-temps]
Modern error tracking SDKs add minimal overhead. Sentry's JavaScript SDK adds approximately 30KB gzipped to your bundle. Most alternatives are lighter -- GlitchTip uses the same Sentry SDK, and Temps' client-side snippet is under 10KB. Server-side SDKs have negligible performance impact since errors are captured asynchronously and sent in batches. The exception is LogRocket, whose session replay SDK is heavier due to DOM recording -- expect 50-100KB additional bundle size.
For self-hosted: Temps and GlitchTip are both completely free with no event limits. For managed SaaS: Bugsnag's free tier (7,500 events/month) is the most generous. Rollbar offers 5,000 events/month. LogRocket gives 1,000 sessions/month. Sentry's own free tier (5,000 errors/month) is actually competitive for very small projects -- the pain starts when you outgrow it and face the $26/month jump.
[INTERNAL-LINK: setting up error tracking from scratch -> how-to-set-up-error-tracking-without-sentry]
