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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Error Tracking
  4. Exception Monitoring
  5. Airbrake vs Sentry

Airbrake vs Sentry

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Sentry
Sentry
Stacks15.1K
Followers9.4K
Votes864
GitHub Stars42.4K
Forks4.5K
Airbrake
Airbrake
Stacks299
Followers298
Votes128

Airbrake vs Sentry: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this guide, we will compare the key differences between Airbrake and Sentry, two popular error monitoring tools. Both Airbrake and Sentry are used to track and diagnose errors in software applications, but they have some distinct features that set them apart from each other.

  1. Pricing Model: One of the major differences between Airbrake and Sentry is their pricing model. Airbrake offers tiered pricing based on the number of projects and users, with different features available at each pricing level. On the other hand, Sentry provides a free tier that allows users to monitor a limited number of events per month, and they also offer multiple paid plans based on the number of events and additional features needed.

  2. Deployment Options: Another significant difference between Airbrake and Sentry lies in their deployment options. Airbrake is a cloud-based solution, which means that users do not have to worry about infrastructure management and can access their error data from anywhere with an internet connection. On the contrary, Sentry offers both a cloud-based option and the ability to deploy on-premises, making it suitable for organizations with specific security or compliance requirements.

  3. Error Aggregation and Grouping: Airbrake and Sentry utilize different approaches when it comes to error aggregation and grouping. Airbrake groups similar errors based on the error message, stack trace, and other factors. While this approach can be effective in reducing noise, it may also overlook unique errors that occur in different parts of the codebase. Sentry, on the other hand, uses an intelligent grouping algorithm that takes into account contextual information such as user data, environment variables, and more. This helps in better categorization and understanding of errors.

  4. Integrations and Ecosystem: Both Airbrake and Sentry offer integrations with popular development and productivity tools, but there are differences in the range and depth of their integrations. Airbrake provides integrations with services like GitHub, JIRA, Slack, and more. On the other hand, Sentry offers a wide range of integrations including GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and various popular frameworks and platforms like Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and more. The extensive ecosystem offered by Sentry allows for seamless integration with different development environments.

  5. Customization and Extensibility: When it comes to customization and extensibility, Airbrake and Sentry have different capabilities. Airbrake allows users to create custom error parameters and filters to enhance error tracking and reporting. However, Sentry takes customization a step further by providing users with the ability to create custom event data and attributes, as well as the option to define and track custom metrics. This level of customization and extensibility can be valuable for teams that require more fine-grained control over their error monitoring.

  6. Alerting and Notifications: The way Airbrake and Sentry handle alerting and notifications also differs. Airbrake provides email notifications for error events, allowing users to stay updated on critical issues. Additionally, Airbrake supports integrations with tools like Slack and HipChat for real-time notifications. On the other hand, Sentry offers a more flexible notification system that allows users to configure various channels for alerting, including email, Slack, webhooks, and more. This flexibility in notification configuration provides users with more control over receiving alerts.

In Summary, Airbrake and Sentry differ in their pricing models, deployment options, error aggregation strategies, integrations and ecosystem, customization and extensibility features, as well as alerting and notification capabilities. These differences allow users to choose the tool that best suits their specific needs and requirements.

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Advice on Sentry, Airbrake

Attila
Attila

Management Advisor at artkonekt

Apr 2, 2021

Review

I've been using both Bugsnag and Sentry for years and I would recommend both of them and as Tom Maiaroto mentioned "they are roughly the same". Bugzilla is a different kind of animal, that is more of an issue tracker like Jira or Redmine.

Despite what Tom Maiaroto wrote, we're using these tools more for the backend and less for the frontend, so I am going to give a brief insight into how we use them in our Telemetry stack for monitoring the backend.

Sentry and Bugsnag are advertising themselves as Application Monitoring, but their definite focus is on Error Monitoring. This is what they originally were made for and this is were they shine.

A typical confusion is that we think they are mutually replaceable with APM tools like NewRelic's or Datadog's APM. Albeit both are doing very similar things, there are several significant differences:

  • NewRelic/Datadog APMs are sampling exceptions, so you don't have a "complete catalog" of your errors
  • Sentry and Bugsnag are collecting very detailed data (stack trace, HTTP request, user, device, host, etc) of each exception, thus you'll exactly know when, where, how many times and to whom those errors have happened.

The focus of those APMs is broader and can give you a much bigger picture like distributed tracing, logs, processes on the hosts at the given moment just to name a few. But they are not designed to give you a laser focus on each specific error.

So the bottom line is that they are complementing each other.

Sentry is more affordable especially if you have more than 5 users. I personally prefer Bugsnag because of the cleaner UI. But at the end of the day, they're both very valuable and lovely gadgets in our toolbox and help us a lot being on top of our systems

1.91k views1.91k
Comments
Nicholas
Nicholas

Jun 1, 2020

Decided

I essentially inherited a Shopify theme that was originally created by an agency. After discovering a number of errors being thrown in the Dev Console just by scrolling through the website, I needed more visibility over any errors happening in the field. Having used both Sentry and TrackJS, I always got lost in the TrackJS interface, so I felt more comfortable introducing Sentry. The Sentry free tier is also very generous, although it turns out the theme threw over 15k errors in less than a week.

I highly recommend setting up error tracking from day one. Theoretically, you should never need to upgrade from the free tier if you're keeping on top of the errors...

250k views250k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Sentry
Sentry
Airbrake
Airbrake

Sentry’s Application Monitoring platform helps developers see performance issues, fix errors faster, and optimize their code health.

Airbrake collects errors for your applications in all major languages and frameworks. We alert you to new errors and give you critical context, trends and details needed to find and fix errors fast.

Real-Time Updates: For the first time, developers can fix code-level issues anywhere in the stack well before users even encounter an error.;Complete Context: Spend more time where it matters, rather than investing in low-impact issues.;Integrate Everywhere: Drop-in integration for every major platform, framework, and language -- JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Node, Java, .NET, mobile.;Root Cause: See the events that lead to errors so you always debug the right thing the first time.;Private & Secure: Sentry is SOC-2 compliant with GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and Privacy Shield by default.;Open Source: Sentry is 100% open source and available on GitHub.
Dupe Detection- Developers will only receive an email once when an error occurs — rather than getting buried under an error email avalanche.;Auto Resolve- An action on each application deployment — that way developers can focus on the problems that exist today, not the ones from last month.;Github Aware- Airbrake is github-aware, and can link code in your Airbrake error stack traces to the corresponding locations on github.;RSS- Airbrake offers an RSS feed of error activity, so errors can be monitored using feed readers.;Lighthouse Integration- Airbrake integrates with the Lighthouse bug/ticket tracking application, for easy discussion of errors and integration with your existing workflow.;SSL Secure- Airbrake can be accessed over SSL-protected secure connections to keep your data completely private. The application itself is updated regularly with the latest security patches.;Multiple Projects- Easily track and navigate errors from multiple projects for up to 64 projects.;Fully supported platforms/languages- Ruby on Rails, iOS
Statistics
GitHub Stars
42.4K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
4.5K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
15.1K
Stacks
299
Followers
9.4K
Followers
298
Votes
864
Votes
128
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 238
    Consolidates similar errors and makes resolution easy
  • 121
    Email Notifications
  • 108
    Open source
  • 84
    Slack integration
  • 71
    Github integration
Cons
  • 12
    Confusing UI
  • 4
    Bundle size
Pros
  • 28
    Reliable
  • 25
    Consolidates similar errors
  • 22
    Easy setup
  • 15
    Slack Integration
  • 10
    Github Integration
Cons
  • 0
    Rejects error report if non-latin characters exists
Integrations
Sprint.ly
Sprint.ly
C#
C#
PagerDuty
PagerDuty
Twilio
Twilio
Auth0
Auth0
Golang
Golang
Datadog
Datadog
Backbone.js
Backbone.js
Django
Django
Swift
Swift
GitHub
GitHub
ExpressJS
ExpressJS
Chef
Chef
Slack
Slack
PHP
PHP
JavaScript
JavaScript
Django
Django
Zapier
Zapier
Heroku
Heroku
Python
Python

What are some alternatives to Sentry, Airbrake?

Rollbar

Rollbar

Rollbar is the leading continuous code improvement platform that proactively discovers, predicts, and remediates errors with real-time AI-assisted workflows. With Rollbar, developers continually improve their code and constantly innovate ra

Bugsnag

Bugsnag

Bugsnag captures errors from your web, mobile and back-end applications, providing instant visibility into user impact. Diagnostic data and tools are included to help your team prioritize, debug and fix exceptions fast.

Raygun

Raygun

Raygun gives you a window into how users are really experiencing your software applications. Detect, diagnose and resolve issues that are affecting end users with greater speed and accuracy.

Opbeat

Opbeat

Opbeat is application monitoring for developers, and gives you performance metrics, error logging, release tracking and workflow in one smart product.

Honeybadger

Honeybadger

Honeybadger does more than report errors, it helps you work with your team to fix them. Errors can be assigned. You can comment via email. And a fine-grained permissions system means you control who has access to each specific project.

Errbit

Errbit

Errbit is a tool for collecting and managing errors from other applications. It is Airbrake (formerly known as Hoptoad) API compliant, so if you are already using Airbrake, you can just point the airbrake gem to your Errbit server.

OverOps

OverOps

OverOps maps the DNA of code as it’s executing in pre-prod and production to Identify all issues and anomalies, and deliver True Root Cause to the right person, without relying on logs.

TrackJS

TrackJS

Production error monitoring and reporting for web applications. TrackJS provides deep insights into real user errors. See the user, network, and application events that tell the story of an error so you can actually fix them.

App Enlight

App Enlight

App Enlight provides a helpful interface to let you and your team save time spent on debugging and reproducing exceptions and performance issues from a production environment.

elmah.io

elmah.io

Cloud logging for .NET web applications using ELMAH. Find bugs before you go live. Powerful search, API, integration with Slack, GitHub, Visual Studio and more

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