Best Error Monitoring Tools in 2026

Why Error Monitoring Is Worth Paying For

Every app throws exceptions in production. The question is who finds out first: you, or a customer who emails support three days later with a screenshot and no stack trace. An error monitoring tool closes that gap. It catches the exception the moment it happens, groups it with every other occurrence of the same bug, attaches the stack trace, the release, the browser or device, and the user who hit it, and then tells the right person.

That sounds like a solved problem, and in a sense it is. All six tools in this guide do the basics well. Where they differ is in the things that decide whether you are happy with the tool a year from now:

• What the bill is based on. Errors, occurrences, events, sessions, spans and hosts are not the same unit, and the cheapest-looking plan is not always the cheapest at your volume.
• What comes in the box. Some tools are error trackers and nothing else. Others bundle tracing, session replay, logs, uptime checks and status pages. That can save you a second subscription or push you into paying for features you never open.
• Which platforms are first-class. A tool that is excellent for a Rails backend can be thin on Unity, and the reverse.
• How long data is kept. On entry plans, retention ranges from 30 days to 180 days in this group, which matters when a bug comes back after a quarter.

This guide is written for teams picking their first error monitoring tool, or their next one. Instead of ranking the tools on one list and stopping there, it matches them to common situations: mobile apps, games, Ruby and Elixir shops, teams already paying for Datadog, startups that need a hard budget cap, and products that throw a lot of errors.

How We Compared

We did not run a hands-on test for this guide. We compared the six tools on what their vendors publish: pricing pages, plan tables, documentation and SDK lists, all read in October 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a number (BugSnag's paid prices, for example), we say so instead of estimating it. We did not use review-site ratings. Prices are in US dollars and can change, so check the vendor's page before you buy.

We looked at five things for each tool:

1. Cost at realistic volumes. What you would pay at 50K and 100K errors a month, worked out from published prices.
2. Pricing unit. What exactly is counted, and what is free.
3. Platform coverage. Which languages and frameworks have official SDKs.
4. What else is bundled. Tracing, session replay, logs, uptime and status pages.
5. Team features. Seats, SSO and retention.

Errors, Occurrences, Events: What You Are Actually Paying For

Before comparing prices, it helps to know that the six vendors count slightly different things.

• Errors (Sentry, Honeybadger, Raygun, Datadog). One error is one exception event sent to the service. If the same bug fires 2,000 times, that is 2,000 errors against your quota, even though it shows up as a single grouped issue in the dashboard.
• Occurrences (Rollbar). Rollbar's word for the same idea: each time an error or message is received, that is one occurrence.
• Events (BugSnag). BugSnag counts events, meaning an unhandled exception or a handled one you choose to report. Its performance product is metered separately in spans.
• Spans, replays and logs (Sentry). Sentry meters each data type on its own. Paid plans include 50K errors, 5M spans and 50 replays, and you buy more of each as prepaid reserved volume or pay as you go.
• Sessions and traces (Raygun, Datadog). Real User Monitoring is billed per session and APM per trace (Raygun) or per host (Datadog). These are separate products with separate bills.
• Logging allowance (Honeybadger). On top of errors, Honeybadger gives each plan a daily allowance of log and event data (its Insights feature).

Two practical rules follow:

• If you only want exceptions, the error counts in the table are comparable. Use the cost section below.
• If you also want tracing, replay or logs, add up each meter separately. A plan that looks cheap for errors can cost more once tracing is switched on, and the reverse.

One more tip that applies to every tool here: most of your error volume usually comes from a handful of noisy issues. Filtering known noise in the SDK (bots, browser extensions, a retry loop that logs the same failure) often cuts volume more than switching vendors does.

Which Tool Fits Your Situation

You ship mobile apps

Look at BugSnag first, then Sentry. BugSnag is built around app stability. It lists 50+ platforms, including Android, iOS, Flutter and React Native, and its Preferred plan adds stability benchmarks and advanced segmentation, which help when you track crash-free sessions across app versions. Sentry is a strong second: it has official Android, Apple and React Native SDKs and adds session replay for mobile. Raygun also covers Android and iOS.

You build games

Sentry is the clearest fit. Its SDK list includes Unity, Unreal and game consoles, so one tool can cover the game client and the backend. BugSnag (Unity and Unreal) and Raygun (Unity) are options if your team already knows them.

Your backend is Ruby, Elixir or PHP

Honeybadger. It lists Ruby, Elixir, PHP, Python, Go, Java, JavaScript and Node, and its flat plans bundle uptime monitors, cron check-ins, status pages and logs. A small Rails or Phoenix team can replace three or four tools with one bill. Sentry and Rollbar both support Ruby and PHP as well.

You already pay for Datadog

Datadog Error Tracking. It groups errors from the APM, RUM and log data you already send to Datadog, and links an error to the session replay around it. You avoid running a second agent and a second dashboard. If you are not on Datadog yet, starting there just for error tracking means taking on its separate meters for APM, RUM and logs.

You are a startup with a fixed budget

Rollbar, or Honeybadger. Rollbar never charges per seat, publishes every price step, and stops accepting data at your limit by default instead of billing overage. You can switch to on-demand billing or set a dollar budget instead. Honeybadger's flat monthly plans are equally easy to forecast, and they bundle uptime monitoring. Sentry's free Developer plan is also generous, but it is limited to one user.

Your product throws a lot of errors

Compare Rollbar and Raygun. At 1M occurrences a month, Rollbar Essentials is $165.83/month on annual billing ($199 monthly). Raygun Business is $400/month on annual billing ($600 monthly) for 1M errors, but it keeps data for 180 days instead of 90 and includes unlimited apps and members. If retention matters more than price, Raygun wins; if price matters most, Rollbar does.

The Tools in Detail

1) Sentry: Best overall

Sentry covers more ground than any other tool here. Its docs list 22 top-level SDKs, from JavaScript, Python, Java, .NET, Go, Ruby and PHP to Android, Apple, React Native, Unity, Unreal and consoles. Errors, tracing, session replay, logs, profiling, cron monitors and uptime monitors live in one product, so a full-stack team can follow a bug from a frontend click to a slow database call without switching tools.

Pricing:

• Developer (free): 1 user, 5K errors, 5M spans, 50 replays, 5 GB logs, 1 cron monitor and 1 uptime monitor, with a 30-day lookback.
• Team: $26/month on annual billing or $29 monthly. Unlimited users, 50K errors, 5M spans, 50 replays, up to 90-day lookback.
• Business: $80/month on annual billing or $89 monthly, with the same included volume plus Business features such as SAML SSO.
• Extra volume: priced per category as prepaid reserved volume or pay as you go. Seer, Sentry's AI debugging agent, is $40 per active contributor per month.

Good to know:

• Single sign-on is tiered: Google and GitHub on Team, SAML and SCIM on Business.
• You can self-host Sentry for free. The code is under the FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0 license, which is source-available rather than classic open source.

Choose Sentry if you want one tool for errors and performance, ship on several platforms, or build games.

2) Rollbar: Best for a hard budget cap

Rollbar is the most predictable bill in this group. You pick an occurrence tier, users are never charged per seat, and by default Rollbar stops at your limit instead of sending a surprise invoice. If you would rather keep data flowing, switch to on-demand billing at the plan rate or set a dollar budget.

Pricing:

• Free: 5K occurrences and 1K session replays a month, 30-day retention, unlimited users.
• Essentials: from $7.50/month on annual billing ($9 monthly) at 10K occurrences, rising to $24.17 at 50K, $40.83 at 100K and $165.83 at 1M (annual). 90-day retention and 4,000 AI credits a month.
• Advanced: from $10.83/month on annual billing ($13 monthly) at 10K occurrences, $65.83 at 50K. 180-day retention, SAML and SCIM, 8,000 AI credits, and Rollbar Analyze included.
• Enterprise: for 80M+ events a month.

Good to know:

• AI credits and session replays are included on paid plans, and you can buy more on top.
• Session replay covers JavaScript and React apps.
• Rollbar offers 50% off for education and 501(c)(3) nonprofits, and a 14-day Advanced trial with 200K occurrences.
• SDKs cover JavaScript (browser and Node), Python, Ruby, PHP, Java and Android, .NET, Go, Apple and React Native. The site does not list a tracing or performance product, so pair it with something else if you need one.

Choose Rollbar if you want error tracking only, a bill that cannot run away, and many people with access.

3) BugSnag: Best for mobile app stability

BugSnag, owned by SmartBear, thinks in terms of stability: how many sessions run without a crash, by release and by segment. That framing suits mobile teams who ship versioned apps and have to decide whether a release is healthy enough to roll out further. It also has performance monitoring with spans and distributed tracing.

Pricing:

• Free: 1 user, 7.5K events and 1M spans a month, 7-day retention.
• Select: unlimited users, 50K to 3M events and 1M to 150M spans a month, 60-day retention.
• Preferred: 100K to 3M events, up to 300M spans, SAML SSO, stability benchmarks and advanced segmentation.
• Enterprise: custom, on-premises or SaaS, with audit logs.

Select and Preferred prices are worked out in a calculator from the tiers you pick. BugSnag does not publish fixed dollar figures, so we could not include them in the cost comparison.

Good to know:

• Platforms number 50+, across mobile (Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native), web, backend (Go, Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby) and games (Unity, Unreal).
• The site does not list session replay or logs.
• The 7-day retention on the free plan is the shortest in this group.

Choose BugSnag if mobile app stability is your main metric, or you need an on-premises deployment.

4) Honeybadger: Best for Ruby, Elixir and small teams

Honeybadger is the "one simple bill" option. Its plans bundle error tracking with performance, logging (Insights), dashboards, uptime monitors, cron check-ins and status pages. For a small team that would otherwise pay for an error tracker, an uptime monitor and a status page separately, that adds up.

Pricing:

• Developer (free): 5K errors a month, 15-day retention, 1 user, 1 uptime monitor, 1 status page, and 50 MB/day of logs kept 7 days.
• Team: $26/month or $286/year. 50K errors a month, 90-day retention, unlimited users, 5 uptime monitors, and 100 MB/day of logs kept 7 days. Extra errors are $0.0003 each.
• Business: $80/month or $880/year. 50K errors a month, 180-day retention, unlimited teams, and logs kept 14 days. Extra errors are $0.0006 each.

Good to know:

• Log retention is longer (up to 30 days on Team, 60 on Business) only if you buy a bigger logging add-on.
• Honeybadger offers a 30-day free trial. Self-hosted deployments are available through sales.
• Supported platforms include Ruby, JavaScript, Node, Go, Elixir, Python, PHP, Java, .NET, Crystal and Clojure, plus a Cocoa SDK for iOS and macOS and a React Native guide. That covers most web stacks, but the mobile and game coverage is narrower than Sentry's or BugSnag's.

Choose Honeybadger if you run a Ruby, Elixir or PHP backend and want monitoring, uptime and status pages on one plan.

5) Raygun: Best for long retention

Raygun sells Crash Reporting, Real User Monitoring and APM as separate products. Crash Reporting is the error tracker, and every plan keeps data for 180 days and includes unlimited apps and members. That is the longest retention on an entry plan in this group.

Pricing (Crash Reporting):

• Basic: $40/month on annual billing ($60 monthly) for 100K errors.
• Team: $80/month on annual billing ($120 monthly) for 200K errors.
• Business: $400/month on annual billing ($600 monthly) for 1M errors.
• Enterprise: custom. On-demand overage is $0.001 per error.

Other products:

• Real User Monitoring: from $80/month annual ($120 monthly) for 100K sessions, with 60-day retention.
• APM: from $80/month annual ($120 monthly) for 100K traces.

Good to know:

• There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial.
• SSO is an add-on on Basic and Team, and included on Business and up.
• Raygun supports 20+ languages, including JavaScript, React, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, ASP.NET, Java, Python, Go, Android, iOS, Unity and ColdFusion. Its AI Error Resolution feature suggests fixes for errors.
• The site does not mention session replay.

Choose Raygun if you need errors kept for six months, run many apps, or work on .NET.

6) Datadog Error Tracking: Best if you already run Datadog

Datadog Error Tracking is less a separate tool than a view on data Datadog already collects. It groups errors from APM traces, RUM sessions and logs without code changes, links an error to the session replay around it (15 seconds before and after) and to Jira. It supports Java, Python, Ruby, Node.js, PHP, .NET, Go, C++, Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native and more.

Pricing:

• Up to 50K errors: $25/month on annual billing, $30 month to month, or $36 on demand.
• Above 50K errors: priced per 1,000 errors in volume tiers, starting at $0.25 per 1,000 (50K to 100K, annual) and falling to $0.10 above 20M.
• Related products, billed separately: APM from $31 per host per month, RUM at $0.15 per 1,000 sessions, and Session Replay at $2.50 per 1,000 sessions (annual).

Good to know:

• Error samples are kept 30 days. Issues are kept for a year after their last activity.
• No free Error Tracking tier is listed.

Choose Datadog if your team already lives in Datadog and wants errors next to traces, logs and infrastructure metrics.

Cost Comparison at 50K and 100K Errors a Month

These figures come from the published prices above, on annual billing unless noted. They cover error tracking only, with no tracing, replay or extra products. BugSnag is left out because its paid prices are calculator-only.

At 50K errors a month:

At this volume the four cheapest options are within about $2 of each other, so pick on features, not price. Raygun costs more, but its Basic plan already covers twice the volume and keeps data for 180 days.

At 100K errors a month:

At 100K the spread is still under $4. A few notes on the arithmetic:

• Sentry: we used its reserved price for errors between 50K and 100K. Pay-as-you-go errors cost more ($0.0003625 each at that tier, or $44.13 in total).
• Honeybadger: we used the annual plan price ($23.83 a month) plus overage at $0.0003 per error, which is billed on top.
• Datadog: this assumes you are already sending the underlying data to Datadog.

The takeaway is that at small and mid volumes, error tracking costs roughly the same everywhere. The real differences are what each plan includes beyond errors, how long data is kept, and how each tool behaves when you exceed your quota.

What Else Each Plan Includes

"Not listed" means we did not find it on the vendor's site in October 2026. It does not mean the vendor will never offer it.

How to Decide in Four Questions

1. Do you need tracing and replay too? If yes, shortlist Sentry, or Datadog if you already use it. If no, every tool here works, and Rollbar or Honeybadger give the simplest bill.
2. What is your main platform? For mobile, BugSnag or Sentry. For games, Sentry. For Ruby or Elixir, Honeybadger. For .NET, Raygun or Sentry.
3. How long must you keep data? If 90 days is enough, most entry plans do it. For 180 days, look at Raygun (every plan), Rollbar Advanced or Honeybadger Business.
4. What should happen when you hit your quota? If the answer is "stop, don't bill me", Rollbar's default hard cap does exactly that. Otherwise, compare overage rates.

Then run a trial on one real service for two weeks. Wire up releases and source maps, and look at how each tool groups your actual errors. Grouping quality on your own code tells you more than any feature list.

Getting Value From Whichever Tool You Pick

The tool matters less than how you set it up. These steps apply to all six, and each one cuts noise or speeds up fixes:

• Tag every event with a release. Then you can see which deploy introduced a bug and whether the next one fixed it.
• Upload source maps and debug symbols. Minified JavaScript and stripped mobile builds produce stack traces nobody can read. Every tool here supports uploads from your build step.
• Attach a user ID, not personal data. An ID is enough to count affected users and find the account. Leave names and emails out unless your privacy policy covers them.
• Route alerts by owner. Send backend errors to the backend channel and mobile crashes to the mobile team. One shared firehose gets muted within a month.
• Alert on new issues and regressions, not on every event. A spike in a known issue is worth a look. A brand-new issue after a deploy is worth a page.
• Review the top ten issues every week. Fix them, or mark them as ignored. Noisy, known issues are what push you into the next pricing tier.
• Set a quota or budget on day one. Decide upfront what should happen when a bad release floods the service, before it happens.

Conclusion

There is no wrong answer among these six, but there is usually a best fit. Sentry is the safest default: widest platform coverage, a free plan, and everything from errors to uptime in one product. Rollbar is the pick when the budget has to be fixed. BugSnag suits mobile teams that live by stability scores. Honeybadger gives Ruby and Elixir teams errors, uptime and status pages on one flat plan. Raygun keeps data longest. Datadog Error Tracking makes sense when Datadog is already your observability home.

At 50K or 100K errors a month the prices sit within a few dollars of each other. So choose on platform fit, bundled features and retention, then confirm current prices on the vendor's site before you sign up.