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Review basis

Research-based review: the AppDuo Editorial Team compiled it from official pages, documentation, app stores, press and user feedback, without hands-on testing. Every claim links to a source with the date it was checked.

15 reference sources

Information updated Nov 11, 2026

How we review
Sentry logo

Sentry Review

Error and performance monitoring with a free tier and public source code

Editorial Team7.3/10Write the first review

By Official AppDuo editorial team · Updated

  • Web
  • API
Freemium · Free
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Decide at a glance

Our verdict

Sentry suits development teams that need error tracking across many languages and frameworks, with a free tier to start. The trade-off is that cost depends on event quotas and add-ons, so it is harder to predict as volume grows.

Best for: Web, mobile or game teams that need errors aggregated across platforms

Skip it if: Teams that need fixed, easy-to-budget pricing when error volume swings

Pros

  • Official docs cover many programming languages, mobile platforms, game engines and consoles
  • Free Developer plan; unlimited users from the Team plan up
  • Source code is public on GitHub, with a self-hosted directory

Cons

  • Error events above quota are billed pay-as-you-go, but the pricing page lists no rate
  • Critics, including the OSI's vice chair, say the FSL license is not open source
All pros and cons · Who is it for?

Pros

  • API, CLI and MCP server for automation and AI agents
  • Security page states SOC 2 Type II compliance

Cons

  • Past security incidents (2016, 2020) and a 2022 outage that took services down for 6+ hours
  • Trustpilot score of 3.8/5 from 15 reviews, including support complaints

Best for

  • Solo developers who want to try the free Developer plan

Skip it if

  • Teams that need an interface in a language other than English

Experience & key features

Sentry is an error and performance monitoring platform for developers, built by Functional Software. According to the ninth-anniversary post on Sentry's blog, it began as django-db-log, which logged errors to a database and aggregated them instead of Django's default of one email per error. It then grew to cover Python more broadly, Ruby and JavaScript, and the company later spun out the cloud service.

Official docs cover .NET, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, PHP, Python, Ruby and Rust; mobile platforms such as Android, iOS (Apple), React Native and Flutter (Dart); the Unity, Unreal and Godot engines; and PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. There are also guides for many web frameworks and serverless functions such as AWS Lambda. Beyond error tracking, the pricing page lists tracing, replays, logs, application metrics, and cron and uptime monitors. Seer, an AI agent that looks for root causes and proposes fixes, became generally available on June 17, 2025.

The official pricing page lists Developer free, Team at $29/month ($26/month billed yearly), Business at $89/month ($80/month billed yearly) and Enterprise by quote. Team and Business share the same included quotas; Business adds more dashboards and metric monitors, SAML/SCIM and longer sampled retention. Seer is billed separately: the 2025 announcement put it at $20/month including $25 of monthly credits, and the pricing page now says new credit-based Seer pricing starts December 8.

On licensing, Sentry moved from BSD 3-Clause to the Business Source License in 2019, then to the Functional Source License (FSL) in November 2023. Per TechCrunch, FSL code converts to Apache 2.0 or MIT after two years, while Thierry Carrez, vice chair of the Open Source Initiative, argued FSL is not open source. The GitHub repository remains public and includes a self-hosted directory.

Sentry is built around developer debugging and connects to GitHub, Slack and Jira. Code platforms such as GitHub or GitLab sit alongside it in the workflow rather than replacing it. The decision usually comes down to cost at your real event volume and whether you need to self-host.

Screenshots

Error Monitoring product image on Sentry's official site
Error Monitoring product image on Sentry's official site
Session Replay product image on Sentry's official site
Session Replay product image on Sentry's official site
Hero image on Sentry's welcome page
Hero image on Sentry's welcome page

Plans & pricing

Prices last verified Nov 11, 2026

Developer

Personal

Free

Per the pricing page: 1 user, 5k errors, 5M tracing spans, 50 replays, 5 GB logs and 5 GB application metrics, 30-day data lookback. No API access.

Team

Business

$29/mo

$26/mo billed yearly

Unlimited users; included quotas of 50k errors, 5M spans, 50 replays; data lookback up to 90 days; API access and spend caps. Events above quota are billed pay-as-you-go.

Business

Business

$89/mo

$80/mo billed yearly

Unlimited users; same included quotas as Team; adds unlimited dashboards, 1,000 metric monitors, SAML and SCIM, and extra sampled retention beyond 90 days. 14-day trial, no card required.

Enterprise

Business

Contact sales

Custom pricing and quotas; contact sales.

Free plan limits
The free Developer plan covers 1 user: 5k errors, 5M spans and 50 replays per month.
Free trial
14-day free trial · no credit card
Cancellation & refunds

The pricing page does not state a refund policy; check the terms of service or ask Sentry.

Privacy

Per the privacy policy, Functional Software (d/b/a Sentry) controls account data, and the service is hosted in the United States and Germany. Data that customers submit about their own end users is outside the policy's scope. The policy gives no fixed retention periods and allows sharing aggregated or de-identified data with third parties. The security page states Sentry maintains SOC 2 Type II compliance.

Official pricing page

Sentry alternatives

GitHub logo7.9/10

GitHub

Code hosting, code review, CI/CD and Copilot on one platform

Freemium
GitLab logo7.4/10

GitLab

DevSecOps platform for source control, CI/CD and security, cloud or self-hosted

Freemium

Controversies & incidents

Issues documented by the press, regulators, courts or the vendor itself. Every item is sourced; unproven claims are labelled as allegations. Last researched: Nov 11, 2026

  • Low impactAllegedOther ·

    Dispute over whether the FSL license is open source

    Per TechCrunch, Thierry Carrez, vice chair of the Open Source Initiative, argued that Sentry’s FSL license is not open source.

    Read the full account

    When Sentry moved to the FSL in November 2023, TechCrunch quoted Thierry Carrez (general manager of the Open Infrastructure Foundation and vice chair of the Open Source Initiative) calling it "proprietary gatekeeping wrapped in open-washed clothing". Per the article, Sentry aims to grant developers freedom without harmful free-riding, and FSL code converts to Apache 2.0 or MIT after two years.

    Vendor response

    Chad Whitacre, Sentry’s head of open source, said: "We want to widely promote the values that led us to BSL, and to that end we want to fix the friction, with FSL."

    Sources:TechCrunch (2023-11-20): Sentry and the Functional Source License

  • Medium impactResolvedOutage ·

    Google Cloud problem took Sentry down for more than six hours

    Per Sentry, services were down for 6+ hours and roughly 90% of incoming events were lost over eight hours.

    Read the full account

    Sentry said the incident ran from 1:30 AM to 12:17 PM PDT on May 6, 2022, with services down for 6+ hours and roughly 90% of incoming events lost between 3:15 and 11:15 AM. The root cause was a problem in Google Cloud’s primary compute region affecting persistent volumes. The company admitted it "lacks good resilience against single-zone failures"; some synchronous SDKs such as PHP may have degraded customer applications.

    Vendor response

    Sentry outlined plans to expand to multiple zones and regions and prioritised fixing the failure mode in its ingestion PoPs.

    Sources:Sentry blog: details of the outage on May 6, 2022

  • Medium impactResolvedSecurity ·

    Authentication bypass in the integrations API

    Custom-integration tokens could be used on endpoints outside their scope; Sentry reported no evidence of data exposure.

    Read the full account

    A customer reported the flaw on July 20, 2020 and a patch shipped that morning (around 14:04 UTC). On July 22 Sentry notified 462 potentially exposed customers, narrowed down from an initial list of nearly 4,000. It said forensics were not complete at notice time, but it found no evidence of customer data exposure or the flaw being used in the wild.

    Vendor response

    Sentry patched the same day, notified customers and said it "found no evidence of any customer data exposure".

    Sources:Sentry blog (2020-07-27): API authentication bypass

Show 1 more
  • Medium impactResolvedSecurity ·

    Misconfigured permissions on an S3 bucket holding database backups

    Per Sentry, misconfigured S3 permissions left backup files accessible; the company confirmed no third party accessed them.

    Read the full account

    After a security report, Sentry found two conflicting policies on the bucket, one of which let any authenticated AWS user access it. The bucket held partial backups with account details, bcrypt-hashed passwords and API tokens. Sentry revoked access, forced all passwords to expire on June 13, 2016, began encrypting backups before upload, and said public multi-factor authentication and a HackerOne bug bounty were coming.

    Vendor response

    Sentry "confirmed that no database backups had been accessed by a third party" and listed remediation steps.

    Sources:Sentry blog (2016-06-14): security incident of June 12, 2016

Frequently asked questions

Is Sentry free?

Yes. The Developer plan is free for 1 user with 5k errors, 5M spans and 50 replays per month. Paid plans start at Team.

Is Sentry open source?

The source is public on GitHub under the FSL, and code converts to Apache 2.0 or MIT after two years. Per TechCrunch, critics such as Thierry Carrez of the Open Source Initiative say FSL is not open source.

Does Sentry offer a trial?

Yes. The pricing page offers a 14-day Business trial with no credit card required.

Which programming languages does Sentry support?

Docs cover .NET, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Dart, Elixir, PowerShell and Native, plus mobile platforms, game engines and consoles.

Review evidence & sources15

Scores

Ease of use
7.5
Why this score

Platform-specific setup and a free tier help, but only an English interface could be verified and a Trustpilot reviewer reports getting stuck at a setup verification screen.

Features
8.5
Why this score

Docs list dozens of platforms; the product spans error tracking, tracing, replays, logs, cron and uptime monitors and Seer (AI debugging).

Value for money
7.0
Why this score

The free tier and Team at $26/month billed yearly are a reasonable entry point, but Team and Business share the same included quotas, overages cost extra, and Seer added $20/month per the 2025 announcement (Seer is moving to credit-based pricing).

Performance
7.0
Why this score

During the May 6, 2022 outage roughly 90% of incoming events were lost over eight hours; Sentry admitted it lacked good resilience against single-zone failures and outlined fixes.

Support
6.5
Why this score

Every plan gets email and community support (GitHub, Discord); a dedicated account manager is Enterprise-only. Some Trustpilot reviewers call support time-consuming or bureaucratic, though the sample is only 15 reviews.

Privacy & security
7.0
Why this score

SOC 2 Type II and US/German hosting, but the policy permits sharing aggregated data and gives no retention periods, and a 2016 S3 backup misconfiguration is on record.

What users say

Sources

Specs & compatibility
Developer
Functional Software, Inc. (d/b/a Sentry)
Headquarters
United States
Launched
2008
Category
Development

Capabilities

  • AI features
  • Public API
  • Integrations
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Open source
  • Self-hostable

Platforms

  • Web
  • API

Interface languages

  • English

Integrations

  • GitHub
  • Slack
  • Jira

Support

  • Help center
  • Email
  • Community forum

Change history

  1. Feature.Seer, the AI debugging agent, became generally available on paid plans.
  2. Update.Moved the core product to the Functional Source License.
  3. Update.A Google Cloud infrastructure problem took Sentry down for more than six hours.
Full change history (4)
  1. Company.Marking nine years, Sentry said it had 30 full-time employees across San Francisco, Austin and Vienna.
About the author

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