A deploy goes out on Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning a customer has emailed a screenshot of a blank checkout page. Nobody on the team saw an alert, the logs are millions of lines long, and the one stack trace that matters is buried under noise from a bot scraping a retired endpoint. Error tracking software exists to prevent that morning. It catches exceptions and crashes as they happen, folds thousands of repeats into one issue, says which release introduced it and who was hit, and sends the owner a message. This ranking judges products on how quickly a small engineering team can get useful alerts from a real application, how the bill behaves when a bad deploy multiplies the event count by fifty, how freely the data can leave, and whether the vendor is independent. It is written for teams of two to a few hundred engineers, not for a platform group running a global estate.
Visibility in this ranking can be paid for. Payment moves a vendor's position within the
shortlist; it never adds a vendor, and it never changes a word of the review. The largest vendors in error tracking software
cannot hold places 1 to 3. How it works: placement disclosure ·
editorial process.
How we ranked these
Setup: an SDK, source maps and a first alert
Getting started means adding a language SDK or agent to the application, pointing it at a project key, and deploying. The first real error then appears with a stack trace, which is the moment the tool proves itself. What decides the experience is everything after that: uploading source maps or debug symbols so minified JavaScript and compiled mobile code show readable lines, tagging releases so errors map to a deploy, and tuning alerts so the channel does not turn into noise by day three. We looked at SDK coverage for the languages a typical shop runs, how much work source-map upload adds to a continuous integration pipeline, and whether a release marker can be sent with one command. Products that need a day of configuration before the first useful alert scored lower than those that deliver one in an hour.
The real price: events, retention and the bad-deploy spike
Most vendors bill on a monthly count of errors, occurrences or events, and the number that matters is not the average month but the month when a faulty release throws the same exception on every request. A plan that looks cheap at 50,000 events can double in an afternoon. We compared how each product behaves at the limit: some stop collecting, some bill overage at a published rate, some keep collecting and absorb the cost, and a few let you set spending caps per project. We also looked at what retention each tier gives, since a free plan that keeps five days of history is of little use for a bug that shows up every few weeks, and at whether users are charged per seat or are unlimited on paid plans.
Getting your data out: issues, events and the integrations that hold them
The records that matter in an error tracker are the issues, the individual events with their stack traces and breadcrumbs, and the links to tickets in an issue tracker. If the vendor disappears or the price rises, a team wants to take that history with it, or at least keep the links. We checked for a documented API that lists issues and events, for webhooks that push each new issue to a system you own, and for export formats. Retention limits count here too, because data deleted after fifteen days cannot be exported on day sixteen. Products whose API returns full event payloads, and those with a self-hosted edition, made it easier to keep a copy of the history; those that offered only a dashboard did not.
Independence from the vendor: SDKs, agents and who owns the company
Error tracking vendors have been acquired steadily: Bugsnag now sits inside SmartBear, Airbrake belongs to LogicMonitor, and the observability giants have added error modules to their platforms. Ownership matters because it changes pricing, product direction and support. A second form of lock-in is technical. Instrumentation sits in application code, and a vendor-specific SDK takes work to replace across many services. Sentry's protocol is accepted by several other tools, which cuts that cost, while platform agents tie the application to the surrounding suite. We weighed ownership structure, protocol openness, whether a self-hosted or on-premises edition exists, and the vendor's country, since a European buyer may prefer a supplier under European law.
Who it's for: teams shipping code weekly with a few people on call
This ranking is aimed at a team that ships application code weekly or daily, has one to a handful of people on call, and wants a message when a deploy breaks something instead of an email from a customer. That covers a SaaS startup with a Rails or Node back end, an agency maintaining client applications, a mobile team shipping an iOS and Android app, and a mid-size company with a dozen services. It is not aimed at a platform organization that has already standardized on a full observability suite and wants errors as one more panel inside it, nor at a team with no production application, where logs on a screen are enough. Teams running mostly packaged software they do not write have little to instrument.
The 11 tools, reviewed
#1 Honeybadger
Exception, uptime and log monitoring from a small independent shop · United States · honeybadger.io
Independent Uptime included Unlimited users
Honeybadger earns first place by being a complete answer for a team that has no wish to run a monitoring stack. Exceptions, uptime monitors, cron check-ins, logs and a status page sit behind one login, and the plan table is short enough to read in a minute. Paid plans carry unlimited users, which removes the quiet pressure to share one login, and processing continues up to 125 percent of quota before stopping. It was built by three indie developers in 2012 and still behaves like it: documentation is plain and support answers come from engineers. For a Rails, Laravel, Node or Elixir shop of under thirty people, nothing here is missing.
Where it falls short
Honeybadger is thinner than the big platforms once an organization needs distributed tracing, session replay or a dense dashboard layer; its focus stays on exceptions, uptime and logs. Error retention on the Team plan is 90 days and the free plan keeps only 15 days, which matters for slow-moving bugs. The company is small and distributed, so there is no named account team at the Business tier.
Wrong for
A platform group at a large enterprise that needs one tool for traces, replays and infrastructure metrics should look at Datadog or New Relic instead.
Pricing: Developer is $0 with 5,000 errors a month, Team is $26 a month and Business $80 a month (both 50K errors), unlimited users on paid plans, overage of $0.0003 or $0.0006 per notification. (free plan)
Visit Honeybadger →
#2 Rollbar
Error grouping and workflow for production code · United States · rollbar.com
Error grouping Overage controls Deploy tracking
Rollbar is the strongest pure error-tracking product on this list for a team that already runs several services and wants triage to be a workflow rather than a feed. Its grouping puts a stack trace under one item rather than hundreds, items can be assigned, and deploys are tied to the first occurrence of an error. The overage handling is unusually explicit: stop at the limit, bill on demand, or set an overage budget, so a runaway loop does not turn into an invoice conversation. Retention grows from 30 days on the free plan to 90 on Essentials and 180 on Advanced, which suits release cycles that run for months.
Where it falls short
Rollbar keeps its paid prices behind a volume selector rather than a plain table, which makes comparison shopping slower than at Honeybadger or Airbrake. The credit system layered over occurrences adds one more number to track. Some features, such as adaptive alerts, RQL and SCIM provisioning, only arrive at the Advanced tier, and the Enterprise tier is reserved for 80M-plus events.
Wrong for
A team that wants uptime checks, logs and error tracking in a single product will find Rollbar narrower than Honeybadger or AppSignal.
Pricing: Free plan includes 5,000 occurrences and 1,000 sessions a month with 30-day retention; Essentials scales from 10K to 50M occurrences with monthly or annual billing, and Advanced and Enterprise are higher tiers; paid prices are shown only after picking a volume. (free plan)
Visit Rollbar →
#3 AppSignal
Application monitoring from an Amsterdam company · Netherlands · appsignal.com
Dutch company Predictable bill Unlimited users
AppSignal is the pick for a European team that cares where its vendor sits and how the bill behaves. The company is AppSignal B.V., registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam, and the pricing page states three commitments: no surprise invoices, an upgrade only after two of three months over the limit, and monitoring that does not stop at the limit. Errors, performance traces, host metrics, anomaly detection, uptime and logs share a single account with unlimited users, teams and applications. Its depth is best in Ruby and Elixir, where it started, with Node and Python well covered.
Where it falls short
AppSignal's language coverage is narrower than Sentry's, and its error workflow is less elaborate than Rollbar's, with simpler triage and fewer integrations for issue trackers beyond the common ones. Free-plan retention is only five days, which is short for chasing intermittent bugs. Mobile app crash reporting is not the focus, so native iOS and Android teams get less out of it.
Wrong for
A mobile-first team with native iOS and Android apps should look at Bugsnag or Bugfender, which are built around crash and device data.
Pricing: Free plan with 30K requests, 1 GB logging and 5-day retention; the paid plan is a published per-request price (from EUR 219 a month billed yearly for 250K requests), a 30-day trial needs no card, and usage over plan is not billed as a surprise. (free plan)
Visit AppSignal →
#4 Sentry
Error tracking, tracing and replay across most languages · United States · sentry.io
Widest SDK coverage Self-hosting option Add-on billing
Sentry is the default answer in this category and would take first place on capability alone. It has official SDKs for most languages and frameworks, a single issue view that links an error to its trace, replay and release, and a large community that means almost any framework quirk has a documented fix. The Team plan at $26 a month with unlimited users is easy to justify for a startup. Its repository documents a self-hosted deployment, and it describes itself as fair-source, so a company with data-residency demands has a route that most rivals lack. It sits fourth purely because of the dominant-vendor rule.
Where it falls short
The base plan is cheap but the product is a menu of metered extras: logs, metrics, profiling hours, uptime alerts and cron monitors are each billed separately, and the AI debugger costs extra on every plan. The Developer plan allows one user. The interface carries a lot of surface area, and small teams often use a tenth of it.
Wrong for
A team that wants a single predictable bill and no add-on arithmetic should compare Honeybadger or AppSignal before committing to a usage-metered stack.
Pricing: Developer is $0 for 1 user and 5,000 errors; Team is $26 a month and Business $80 a month (annual billing), both with 50,000 errors and unlimited users; Enterprise is custom, and logs, profiling, uptime and cron monitors are pay-as-you-go add-ons. (free plan)
Visit Sentry →
#5 Raygun
Crash reporting, RUM and APM from Wellington · New Zealand · raygun.com
Reserved events Three products New Zealand company
Raygun suits teams that want to buy error tracking on its own and add front-end timing or backend traces later, because each of the three products is priced on the same ladder. Basic, Team and Business tiers are published for each, a reserved-events model discounts annual commitments, and the Business tier adds dedicated support and SAML SSO. The company is Raygun Limited of Wellington, New Zealand, with an office in Seattle, and it has a long record with .NET shops. Pricing by block of events makes monthly spend forecastable for an application with steady traffic.
Where it falls short
Buying three separate products means three event meters to watch, and the line between an error event, a session and a trace is easy to misjudge. Basic-tier price per event is higher than Sentry's Team plan at small volumes, and there is no permanent free plan, only a 14-day trial. Its community and SDK count are smaller than Sentry's.
Wrong for
A solo developer or a hobby project that wants a permanent free plan is better served by Sentry, Honeybadger or Rollbar.
Pricing: Crash Reporting, Real User Monitoring and APM are sold separately in Basic, Team, Business and Enterprise tiers; Basic starts at $40 to $80 per 100K events on annual billing, with a 14-day free trial and overage of $0.001 to $0.002 per event. (free trial)
Visit Raygun →
#6 Bugsnag
Stability monitoring for mobile and web releases · United States · bugsnag.com
Stability scores Mobile focus On-premises option
Bugsnag's strength is turning crash data into a release-health question: the stability benchmarks and automatic prioritization on the Preferred plan help a mobile team decide whether a build is safe to push to everyone. The free plan is generous with spans, paid plans carry unlimited users, and the Enterprise tier is one of the few in this ranking offering on-premises deployment. It is owned by SmartBear Software, which brings procurement and support infrastructure that a startup vendor cannot match, useful when a legal team asks for vendor paperwork.
Where it falls short
Ownership by a larger portfolio company means the product's direction follows SmartBear's broader roadmap, and small teams report less direct contact than at independent vendors. The free plan is capped at one user. Plan pricing is shown as ranges of volume rather than a clear price per tier, so the real bill takes a volume calculation or a sales conversation.
Wrong for
A small team that wants an independent vendor with straightforward flat prices should look at Honeybadger or AppSignal.
Pricing: Free plan with 7.5K events and 1M spans a month for 1 user; Select and Preferred plans scale by event and span volume with monthly or yearly billing, and Enterprise is quoted with on-premises deployment available. (free plan)
Visit Bugsnag →
#7 Airbrake
Error and performance monitoring on a tiered ladder · United States · airbrake.io
Public tiers Spend caps LogicMonitor-owned
Airbrake is the tool for buyers who like to see the ladder: $19 for 25,000 errors, $59 for 100,000, $129 for 300,000, $299 for a million and $799 for five million. Error monitoring and performance monitoring are chosen independently, so a team can pay for exceptions only. Overage is billed on demand at roughly a fifth less than base rates, and a team can set caps per account or project to stop a runaway deploy from becoming a bill. It is an old name in Ruby circles, and its stack-trace workflow will feel familiar.
Where it falls short
Airbrake has no permanent free plan, only a trial, so a side project pays from the first month. The product is now part of LogicMonitor, and the marketing and roadmap emphasis has drifted toward infrastructure monitoring. Its integration list and SDK count lag behind Sentry, and its workflow tools for triage are plainer than Rollbar's.
Wrong for
A hobby developer or very early startup wanting a free plan for ongoing use should start with Sentry, Honeybadger or Bugsnag.
Pricing: Five monthly error tiers from $19 for 25,000 errors to $799 for 5 million, 10 percent off annual plans, with performance monitoring priced separately; a trial offers unlimited errors with 30-day retention. (free trial)
Visit Airbrake →
#8 Datadog Error Tracking
Error tracking inside the Datadog observability platform · United States · datadoghq.com
Observability suite Bundled with APM Large platform
Datadog Error Tracking makes sense when the rest of the stack already reports to Datadog. It groups errors from APM traces, browser and mobile real-user monitoring, and logs into issues, shows how many users an issue hit, and points to the probable commit. For APM traces and RUM events it comes at no additional cost, so a team on those products gets error grouping without another invoice. A flat $25 monthly entry price on annual billing for volumes below 50,000 errors keeps standalone use plausible. It is a major platform, so it sits below the independents.
Where it falls short
Standalone, it is a feature of a platform built for scale, and the surrounding bill (APM hosts, logs, RUM sessions) is where cost climbs. The pricing page layout makes the error-tracking rates hard to find and several figures depend on commitment terms. No free plan was found for this product. The interface assumes familiarity with Datadog's tagging model.
Wrong for
A small team with no other Datadog products should look at Honeybadger or Rollbar instead of buying into a full observability platform for exceptions only.
Pricing: Error Tracking is billed by monthly error volume, with a flat $25 a month on annual billing for volumes below 50,000 errors; it is included at no extra cost for APM traces and RUM events. (none)
Visit Datadog Error Tracking →
#9 New Relic
Observability platform with an errors inbox · United States · newrelic.com
100 GB free ingest Per-user pricing Large platform
New Relic works for a team that wants a single account for application performance, infrastructure, logs and errors and is willing to learn a bigger tool to get it. The free tier allows 100 GB of ingest a month and one full platform user with unlimited basic users, which is enough for a small production service. Beyond that the model is $0.40 per GB plus per-user charges for full platform seats, so costs depend on how much data is sent and how many engineers need deep access. An errors inbox groups exceptions across APM, browser and mobile.
Where it falls short
Cost design is two-dimensional: ingest per GB and full-platform users from $10 up to $349 to $419 a month on the Pro edition, and the sum is hard to predict before data flows. Full platform seats beyond the first cost real money on Standard, capped at five users. Error workflow is not as focused as Rollbar's or Honeybadger's, and EU data storage adds $0.05 per GB.
Wrong for
A team of a few developers needing only exception alerts and release tracking will pay in complexity for features they never open; Honeybadger or Sentry fits better.
Pricing: Usage-based: a free tier of 100 GB data ingest a month and one full platform user, then $0.40 per GB (Standard) or $0.60 per GB (Data Plus), with full platform users from $10 to $418.80 a month depending on tier. (free plan)
Visit New Relic →
#10 LogRocket
Session replay with front-end error and log capture · United States · logrocket.com
Session replay Front-end focus Self-hosted option
LogRocket answers a different question from the server-side tools: what exactly did the user do before the error. Each error links to a replay with console output and network requests, which saves the back-and-forth with support. Unlimited error events do not count against the session meter, so the bill is driven by how many sessions are captured, and conditional recording can reduce that. Enterprise customers in regulated industries can get a self-hosted deployment. For a product team shipping a complicated single-page app, the replay context often settles a bug in minutes.
Where it falls short
Back-end error coverage is thin compared with Sentry or Rollbar, since the product is oriented to browser and mobile sessions. Pricing scales with captured sessions, so a high-traffic consumer site can face a large bill, and the quoted conditional-recording example runs to about $765 a month. Recording user sessions also brings privacy and consent work that pure exception tools avoid.
Wrong for
A back-end team running APIs, workers and queues needs exception tracking on the server side first, and should start with Rollbar, Honeybadger or Sentry.
Pricing: Priced on captured sessions, starting at $176 a month for 25,000 sessions, with unlimited error, log and analytics events included; a 14-day trial needs no card, and Enterprise adds self-hosted deployments. (free trial)
Visit LogRocket →
#11 Bugfender
Remote logs and crash reports from user devices · Spain · bugfender.com
Device logs Mobile focus On-premises option
Bugfender is built around a different habit from the usual stack-trace tools: pull the log lines a specific phone produced before it crashed. The device-centric view suits a support team that needs to look at one customer's session, and the free plan, unlimited team members and apps, is a fair starting point for a small mobile product. The company states ISO 27001 certification and GDPR compliance, runs from a central office in Barcelona, and describes itself as self-funded, which counts when a European buyer wants a smaller independent supplier.
Where it falls short
It is a logging product first, so error grouping, release tracking and performance data are less developed than at Sentry or Bugsnag. Free-plan log retention is only 24 hours and Team retention is 7 days. The jump to Premium at $449 a month is steep, and on-premises licensing at EUR 3,000 a month is aimed at large buyers.
Wrong for
A back-end team debugging server exceptions will not find what it needs here; Rollbar, Honeybadger or Sentry cover server-side grouping and release tracking better.
Pricing: Free plan with 100K daily log lines, 24-hour retention and up to 2,000 devices; Team from $39 a month, Pro from $89 and Premium from $449, with on-premises licensing starting at EUR 3,000 a month. (free plan)
Visit Bugfender →
What the data says about this market
ICT service exports grew from 9.1 percent of world service exports in 2013 to 14.48 percent in 2023, and the European Union moved from 10.58 percent to 17.55 percent, according to World Bank data (indicator BX.GSR.CCIS.ZS). That is a statement about how much software is built and sold across borders, and every product that ships continuously needs something watching it in production. The tools in this ranking sit in that gap: they do not create value on their own, but they shorten the time between a broken release and a repaired one, which is why most engineering teams adopt one within months of a first paying customer.
Of the 11 vendors ranked here, eight are headquartered in the United States, and the other three are in the Netherlands (AppSignal), New Zealand (Raygun) and Spain (Bugfender). Seven offer a permanent free plan: Sentry, Rollbar, Honeybadger, Bugsnag, AppSignal, Bugfender and New Relic. Three offer only a time-limited trial (Raygun, Airbrake and LogRocket), and Datadog Error Tracking has no free plan that we could find. Four list a self-hosted or on-premises route on their own pages: Sentry, Bugsnag, LogRocket and Bugfender. Sentry, Datadog and New Relic carry the major flag, as the dominant incumbent and two large observability platforms.
The structural pattern is consolidation from both ends. Dedicated error trackers have been absorbed into larger companies, with Bugsnag at SmartBear and Airbrake at LogicMonitor, while observability platforms treat errors as a feature bundled into application performance monitoring, as Datadog does at no extra cost for APM traces and RUM events. The independents that remain, Honeybadger, AppSignal, Raygun and Rollbar, compete on narrower promises: a predictable bill, a European address, a clean triage workflow. For a buyer, that suggests choosing on bill behavior and exit options, since a feature gap tends to close within a year while ownership changes do not reverse.
The 11 ranked vendors, counted
- Headquarters by region: North America 8, Europe 2, Asia-Pacific 1
- By country: United States 8, Netherlands 1, New Zealand 1, Spain 1
- Pricing model: Per event / month 3, Usage-based 3, Per tier / month 2, Flat monthly 1, Per request / month 1, Per session / month 1
- Free option: Free plan 7, Free trial 3, None 1
Counted from the 11 vendors on this page. More in our market data.
For the wider market behind error tracking software, read our report The Global Shift to ICT Services,
or browse all industry reports.
Questions and answers
What is the best error tracking software in 2026?
Honeybadger is the best pick for most small and mid-sized teams: one flat-priced product covers exceptions, uptime checks, logs and a status page, with unlimited users on paid plans and a free plan at 5,000 errors a month. Rollbar is the better choice when triage workflow, deploy tracking and explicit overage controls matter most, and AppSignal suits European teams that want a Dutch vendor with a bill that does not jump. Sentry has the widest SDK coverage but sits lower in the order under the rule on dominant vendors.
How is error tracking different from logging?
A log is a stream of lines you search after the fact. Error tracking watches for exceptions, deduplicates them by stack trace, counts how many users were hit, attaches the release and sends an alert to a named owner. You can search logs for an error, but you will not get grouping, assignment or a regression flag when a fixed bug returns. Most teams keep both. Honeybadger, Datadog and AppSignal blend the two in one product; Bugfender leans toward logs.
Do we still need error tracking if we already run an observability platform?
Often the platform already covers it. Datadog includes Error Tracking at no extra cost for APM traces and RUM events, and New Relic has an errors inbox in the same account. The question is whether engineers actually triage there. A standalone tool wins if developers want a faster, narrower view tied to deploys and issue assignments, and if the platform bill is large enough that dropping one module matters.
Can I self-host an error tracker to keep data in my own infrastructure?
Yes, with limits. Sentry documents a self-hosted deployment in its repository, Bugsnag lists on-premises deployment on its Enterprise plan, LogRocket offers self-hosted deployments for regulated industries, and Bugfender sells on-premises licensing from EUR 3,000 a month. Self-hosting moves patching, scaling and storage onto your team, so it suits companies with a compliance reason and an operations engineer, not a three-person startup.
What counts as one error event, and why does it change my bill?
Definitions differ. Sentry and Airbrake count errors, Rollbar counts occurrences, Bugsnag and Raygun count events, AppSignal counts requests, and New Relic bills by gigabytes ingested. A single exception inside a loop can produce thousands of occurrences, so compare plans at your worst month. Check whether handled exceptions, warnings and user feedback count toward the same limit, and whether duplicates are sampled or dropped.
How long should error history be kept?
At least 30 days for most web applications, and 90 days or more if releases ship slowly or bugs show up on monthly cycles such as billing runs. Honeybadger keeps 15 days on its free plan and 90 days on Team, Rollbar moves from 30 days on free to 90 and then 180 on higher tiers, and AppSignal keeps five days on free. If a bug takes weeks to return, a short window means it looks new each time.
Is session replay worth paying for next to error tracking?
For front-end problems, often yes. A stack trace says where code failed, while a replay shows the click sequence and form state that led there, which cuts the time to reproduce a bug. LogRocket is built around this and Sentry and Rollbar offer replay features too. Replay is priced per captured session and creates privacy duties, so apply it to key flows such as checkout, not to every visitor.
Which tools suit a mobile app better than a web back end?
Bugsnag and Bugfender lean toward mobile: Bugsnag with release stability benchmarks, Bugfender with per-device log capture. Both fit teams that want to know whether a build is safe to roll out to everyone, or what one customer's phone did before a crash. Sentry and Datadog also have mobile SDKs, and Raygun and LogRocket cover browser and mobile traffic. For web services in Ruby, Elixir or Node, AppSignal and Honeybadger fit better.
How do I stop alert fatigue after switching on error tracking?
Start with alerts only on new issues and on regressions, not on every occurrence, and route them to one channel owned by the team on call. Mute known noise such as bot traffic, browser extension errors and old client versions, and set a rate threshold before an issue can page someone. Review alert rules after two weeks. Tools with explicit grouping rules and spend caps, like Rollbar and Airbrake, give you more levers.
Does a European company need to worry about where error data is stored?
Yes, because stack traces and request context can contain personal data such as emails, IP addresses and identifiers. Choose a plan with a documented EU region or data processing addendum, and scrub personal fields before they leave your application. AppSignal is a Dutch company, Bugfender states GDPR compliance and ISO 27001 certification, and New Relic lists EU data storage at an extra $0.05 per GB. Check where each vendor processes and stores data before signing.
When is a free plan enough?
For a side project, a prototype or a small internal tool, a free plan is enough: Sentry gives 5,000 errors for one user, Honeybadger 5,000 errors a month, Rollbar 5,000 occurrences with 30 days of retention, and Bugsnag 7.5K events. The limits bite when a second developer joins, when retention matters, or when a bad deploy burns the monthly quota in an hour. Plan for paid use once real customers depend on the application.
