Top 13 Airbrake Alternatives 2024

Stanley Ulili
Updated on October 1, 2024

Airbrake is a reliable tool for tracking application errors and improving performance throughout the development stack. While it is well-regarded in the developer community, you might be here because you're considering alternatives that better suit your needs.

Though Airbrake has many strong points, numerous alternative tools in the market offer similar or even expanded functionality depending on your particular use case.

Before diving into the top alternatives, let's look at what Airbrake brings to the table.

Airbrake key features

Airbrake stands out for its ease of setup and comprehensive feature set, which includes:

  • Real-time error monitoring
  • Performance metrics tracking
  • Deployment tracking
  • Detailed insights into errors
  • Seamless integration with various development tools

A key advantage of Airbrake is its serverless architecture, making it easier to integrate with a wide range of programming languages and frameworks. This reduces the complexity often associated with other monitoring solutions.

Airbrake pricing

Airbrake offers a range of pricing plans tailored to solo developers and larger teams. However, one potential drawback is the gap in user limits between the plans.

The dev + errors plan, priced at $19/month, only supports a single user, while the next tier, basic + errors, jumps to unlimited users for $38/month. This pricing structure might not be ideal if you have few users, as you could end up paying for more capacity than you need.

Moreover, if you need more advanced user role management and permissions, you may opt for the higher-priced pro + errors plan at $76/month, which is also less cost-effective if you have more modest requirements.

The top 13 Airbrake alternatives 2024

Before we dive into each tool individually, let's look at how they compare in terms of features and pricing. This will give you a quick overview of the best alternatives to Airbrake, whether you're looking for enhanced error tracking, better observability tools, or more cost-effective solutions:

Tool Best for Pricing
Better Stack Synthetic monitoring, uptime, API monitoring, incident management, log management Starts at $29/month
Sentry Error tracking, performance monitoring, session replay Starts at $26/month for team plan
Rollbar Real-time error tracking, machine learning error grouping Free for 5,000 events, $15.83/month plan
AppSignal Full-stack monitoring, anomaly detection, server health tracking Free for 250K requests, paid from €18/mo
Raygun Crash reporting, real user monitoring, performance monitoring Starts at $80/month for 100,000 traces
Honeybadger Error tracking, uptime, log management, cron and heartbeat monitoring Free for one user, team plan at $39/mo
Bugsnag Error tracking, stability monitoring, distributed tracing, real user monitoring Free for one user, paid from $18/month
Highlight.io Full-stack visibility, session replay, error monitoring Free plan for 500 sessions, from $50/mo
GlitchTip Simple error tracking, uptime, performance monitoring, Sentry-compatible Free for 1,000 events, paid from $15/mo
New Relic Full-stack observability, infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring (APM) Free plan available, paid from $0.30/GB
LogRocket Session replay, product analytics, AI-powered error tracking Free for 1,000 sessions, team at $69/mo
SigNoz Open-source observability, APM, log management, distributed tracing Free for community edition, from $199/mo
Datadog Cloud monitoring, APM, security, synthetic monitoring, real user monitoring Free plan available, paid from $15/host

1. Better Stack

Screenshot of Better Stack interface

Better Stack is a solid alternative to Airbrake, despite not offering error tracking. It excels at providing deep insights into your application stack, allowing you to debug and resolve incidents effectively. With Better Stack, you can centralize and store your logs and metrics, making it easy to search and visualize them in well-designed, customizable dashboards.

In addition to its log management features, Better Stack offers monitoring tools that cover a variety of services. You can monitor APIs, cron tasks, web applications, SMTP, DNS, and more. Monitoring occurs every 30 seconds from multiple global locations, ensuring accurate results and minimizing false alerts.

Another standout feature of Better Stack is its alert system. It delivers detailed alerts that include screenshots, response data, and incident timelines. What's more, these notifications can be delivered via phone calls, SMS, email, or integrated with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Better Stack also offers support for end-to-end performance monitoring using Playwright scripts. This feature allows you to track user interactions and automatically receive notifications if a Playwright scenario fails, ensuring you can stay on top of real-time performance issues.

🌟Key features

  • Synthetic monitoring
  • Uptime monitoring
  • API monitoring
  • Log management
  • Incident management
  • Comprehensive observability dashboards

➕ Pros

  • Integrated incident management with status pages.
  • Playwright scripts for end-to-end monitoring.
  • Centralizes logs and metrics with clear visualizations.
  • 30-second monitoring intervals.
  • Supports on-call scheduling.
  • Extensive monitoring coverage.

➖ Cons

  • Lacks built-in error tracking.

💲 Pricing

Unlike Airbrake, which only offers a free trial, Better Stack provides a free plan with basic monitoring features such as ten monitors, heartbeat monitoring, incident management, and one status page with 3-minute check intervals.

Better Stack’s pay-as-you-go plan starts at $29/month for more advanced needs. It includes one responder license, unlimited alerts via phone, SMS, push notifications, webhooks, 30-second check intervals, enhanced log retention, on-call scheduling, and customizable status pages.

Want more details? Check out our pricing page.

2. Sentry

Screenshot of Sentry UI

Sentry is a popular alternative to Airbrake, offering an open-source error and performance monitoring solution. Sentry's significant benefit over Airbrake is its session replay functionality, allowing detailed insights into user experiences. This feature makes it easier to diagnose and replicate the issues users encounter by visually tracking their interactions within your app.

Additionally, distributed tracing in Sentry enables you to trace slow-loading web pages or processes back to problematic API calls or database queries, giving you a more comprehensive understanding of your app's performance issues. Airbrake lacks this level of tracing capability, limiting its ability to address performance bottlenecks in distributed systems.

Sentry supports over 100 SDKs for various platforms, making it adaptable to different environments. It also integrates seamlessly with popular tools like GitHub, Jira, and Slack, streamlining your workflow by linking directly to source code, issue tracking, and team communication.

Another feature not available in Airbrake is Sentry's code coverage reports, which help you identify untested code that might lead to errors.

🌟 Key features

  • Error monitoring
  • Distributed tracing
  • Session replay
  • Performance monitoring
  • Release health monitoring
  • Large Language Model(LLM) monitoring

➕ Pros

  • Quick and easy setup with SDKs for over 100 platforms
  • Full-stack observability for both frontend and backend
  • Offers a generous free plan for solo developers
  • Custom dashboards for tailored insights
  • Self-hosting option available

➖ Cons

  • Slight performance overhead in serverless platforms like AWS Lambda and Vercel
  • Advanced features like session replay and performance monitoring require more configuration and resources

💲 Pricing

Sentry offers flexible pricing, starting with a free plan for solo developers, which includes basic error monitoring and tracking. As your needs grow, you can upgrade to the team plan at $26/month, which supports unlimited users and third-party integrations. However, event limits may become restrictive as your application scales.

Sentry provides a business plan for larger teams at $80/month, including advanced features like custom dashboards and application insights. In addition, custom pricing with premium support is available for enterprises with complex needs.

3. Rollbar

Screenshot of Rollbar

Rollbar is another viable error-tracking and performance-monitoring tool to help you discover, prioritize, and resolve issues in real-time. It provides instant alerts and a live feed of unhandled exceptions, enabling quick action on critical problems.

Rollbar sets itself apart from Airbrake with its intelligent error grouping, which uses machine learning to reduce alert noise by clustering similar errors. This lets you focus on the most important issues without being overwhelmed by duplicate or low-priority alerts.

Rollbar, in addition to basic error tracking, supports stack traces, local variables, and telemetry data, all of which simplify root cause analysis. These features not only minimize manual effort but also save you time by giving immediate insights into what caused an error, making it easier to resolve issues quickly.

The tool also includes deployment tracking, which helps identify if new code changes have introduced errors, further improving your ability to pinpoint problems efficiently.

🌟 Key features

  • Real-time error tracking
  • Automated workflows and alerts
  • Deployment and version tracking
  • Cross-project search for better visibility

➕ Pros

  • Custom query language simplifies analysis of error data and metrics.
  • Machine learning-powered error grouping reduces noise and improves issue prioritization.
  • Flexible pricing structure, including a free tier for smaller projects.
  • Broader SDK and language support covering mobile and desktop platforms.
  • Ability to set budget limits for better cost control.

➖ Cons

  • Rollbar’s pricing model can be somewhat difficult to understand.

💲 Pricing

Rollbar's free plan offers 5,000 monthly events with 30-day data retention, making it suitable for small projects. If your needs grow, you must upgrade to the essentials plan at $15.83 monthly for 25,000 events, extending data retention.

The advanced plan at $32.15 per month is necessary for more advanced features like cross-project search. Larger teams or organizations with high event volumes typically need the enterprise plan, which is custom-priced.

4. AppSignal

Screenshot of AppSignal UI

AppSignal is an excellent alternative for error tracking and performance monitoring, offering more comprehensive functionality than Airbrake. With features like anomaly detection, host monitoring, and metric dashboards, it provides the flexibility to monitor both server-level and application-specific performance metrics.

AppSignal also includes uptime monitoring, alerting you when your application is down. What's more, it's a versatile tool that supports a range of widely-used programming languages, such as Ruby, Elixir, Node.js, Python, and JavaScript, making it a great fit for diverse development stacks.

Furthermore, AppSignal integrates log management, which allows you to centralize and manage logs efficiently. This feature enhances the completeness of your monitoring setup, enabling quicker resolution of issues through customizable dashboards that provide a clear overview of your logs and errors.

🌟 Key features

  • Error tracking and resolution
  • Performance monitoring
  • Host monitoring to track server health
  • Anomaly detection for proactive issue identification
  • Uptime monitoring with real-time alerts
  • "Check-ins" are used to track background jobs and scheduled tasks

➕ Pros

  • Quick and easy setup with minimal configuration required
  • Provides full-stack visibility, covering errors, performance, and server metrics
  • Supports custom metrics, allowing you to track app-specific data
  • Can be used for centralized log management

➖ Cons

  • Error tracking lacks some of the advanced, specialized features that Airbrake provides, such as more detailed error prioritization.

💲 Pricing

AppSignal offers a 30-day free trial. Paid plans start at €18/month for application performance monitoring (APM), with the option to add logging as an additional service.

5. Raygun

Raygun UI Screenshot

Raygun is a robust tool for error tracking and performance monitoring with broader features. It offers features like crash reporting, which surfaces critical errors with detailed stack traces, helping you quickly identify and resolve issues. It also provides real-time alerts and filtering options that make tracking and investigating crashes easier.

Another advantage of Raygun is its focus on real user monitoring (RUM), which offers insights into user actions and performance issues before errors occur. This user-centric approach provides deeper visibility into how your application performs in the hands of real users, enabling you to debug more efficiently and prioritize critical issues.

🌟 Key features

  • Real user monitoring
  • Crash reporting
  • Application performance monitoring
  • AI-driven error resolution
  • Deployment tracking
  • Customizable dashboards

➕ Pros

  • Provides real-time alerts for both performance and crash issues
  • Features user experience monitoring, including Core Web Vitals and RUM
  • Detailed diagnostics such as stack traces and session insights simplify debugging
  • Uptime tracking ensures better application reliability

➖ Cons

  • Pricing can increase significantly with high event volumes
  • APM support is not as comprehensive for all programming languages

💲 Pricing

Raygun's pricing starts at $80 monthly for 200,000 errors, offering core features like Apdex scores and deployment tracking. While powerful, this price point can be considered steep, especially for smaller teams when compared to Airbrake.

For larger teams, the business plan starts at $400 monthly for 1,000,000 errors and includes advanced features like priority support and a dedicated account manager. Custom plans are available for enterprise-level customers with tailored SLAs and data retention policies.

While Raygun offers a 14-day free trial, its entry-level pricing is relatively high, making it less suitable if you're on a budget.

6. Honeybadger

Honeybadger UI Screenshot

Honeybadger is an error-tracking and performance-monitoring tool designed for simplicity and full-stack application coverage. Unlike Airbrake, Honeybadger extends its functionality by including cron and heartbeat monitoring, ensuring that background jobs and scheduled tasks run as expected. It also features status pages to inform users about service disruptions or planned maintenance.

Beyond error tracking, Honeybadger offers logging and observability capabilities through BadgerQL, a custom query language that enables you to analyze and visualize logs.

Honeybadger was originally built for Ruby but now supports languages like JavaScript, Node.js, Python, and Go, making it a versatile tool across different tech stacks.

🌟 Key features

  • Error tracking
  • Uptime monitoring
  • Logging and observability (with BadgerQL)
  • Cron and heartbeat monitoring
  • Status pages for user-facing transparency

➕ Pros

  • Centralized log management and visualization
  • Quick and easy to set up
  • Simple, affordable pricing with free and low-cost options, ideal for smaller teams and projects

➖ Cons

  • Its performance monitoring capabilities are less advanced than some like Airbrake.

💲Pricing

Honeybadger offers flexible pricing options, making it competitive for teams of different sizes:

  • Free developer plan: Includes basic error tracking, uptime monitoring, and 5,000 monthly errors for one user.
  • Team plan: Priced at $39 per month, offering unlimited users and higher error and log limits.
  • Business plan: Starting at $120 per month, adding features like SSO, team management, and advanced alert routing.
  • Custom enterprise plans: These are available for organizations with higher needs, offering tailored support and additional features.

7. Bugsnag

Bugsnap UI Screenshot

Bugsnag is a comprehensive alternative to Airbrake, providing error monitoring and performance management across web, mobile, and server platforms. It offers real user monitoring, which helps you understand user interactions, detect crashes, and prioritize fixes effectively.

A key feature that differentiates Bugsnag is its stability metric, which calculates the percentage of crash-free sessions. This indicates app health and helps you monitor overall stability over time.

On top of that, Bugsnag provides distributed tracing, simplifying the identification and resolution of performance bottlenecks.

🌟 Key features

  • Error monitoring
  • Real user monitoring
  • Distributed tracing
  • App stability management

➕ Pros

  • Stability scores offer a clear view of app health
  • Detailed error diagnostics simplify debugging
  • Available SDKs for over 50 platforms
  • Scalable for web, mobile, and server technologies

➖Cons

  • The documentation can be difficult to navigate or understand at times

💲 Pricing

Bugsnag, like many other tools covered in this article, offers a free plan tailored to you as a solo developer. Paid plans start at $18/month for 50,000 events and performance monitoring. For advanced features like error prioritization and custom notifications, you can opt for the $54/month plan, designed for larger teams requiring more functionality.

8. Highlight.io

Highlight.io UI Screenshot

Highlight.io is an open-source monitoring platform that provides comprehensive visibility for full-stack web applications. It outshines Airbrake with the session replay feature, which visually tracks user interactions, allowing you to identify and address bugs quickly.

In addition to error monitoring and logging, Highlight.io captures detailed telemetry data and offers custom error grouping and alerting, making troubleshooting more efficient. By combining insights into user behaviour with technical metrics, Highlight.io provides a well-rounded view of your application's performance, helping you resolve issues more efficiently.

🌟 Key features

  • Session replay
  • Error monitoring
  • Logging, tracing, and metrics for observability

➕ Pros

  • Integrates seamlessly with frameworks like React, Vue, and Node.js, as well as tools like Slack, Jira, and GitHub
  • Open-source, allowing you to self-host and customize to fit your needs
  • Built-in support for OpenTelemetry

➖ Cons

  • Smaller community and ecosystem
  • Self-hosting may require technical expertise, which could be challenging for smaller teams

💲 Pricing

Highlight.io provides a free plan with 500 sessions, AI error grouping, and unlimited seats. The pay-as-you-go plan starts at $50 per month, offering up to 3 dashboards, 2 projects, 15 seats, and 7-day data retention.

For larger needs, the business plan starts at $800 per month, with unlimited dashboards, projects, seats, and custom retention policies. Enterprise-level pricing includes advanced features like SAML & SSO, volume discounts, and tailored SLAs.

9. GlitchTip

GlitchTip UI Screenshot

GlitchTip is an open-source error tracking and performance monitoring alternative that offers a simple and affordable solution for web, mobile, and server-side applications. It shares many features with Airbrake but gains an advantage with its compatibility with Sentry SDKs, making it appealing if you're already familiar with Sentry.

GlitchTip also features intuitive dashboards that make monitoring performance and diagnosing issues easy. Additionally, uptime monitoring ensures you’ll be alerted if your site goes down, giving it an extra layer of functionality.

🌟 Key features

  • Error tracking
  • Performance monitoring
  • Uptime monitoring

➕ Pros

  • Easy to set up and use
  • Sentry SDK compatibility for seamless adoption
  • Open-source, allowing for self-hosting and customization

➖ Cons

  • Lacks deployment tracking

💲 Pricing

GlitchTip’s open-source nature means you can self-host it for free if desired. For the hosted version, the free plan supports up to 1,000 monthly events and includes unlimited projects and team members, making it ideal for smaller teams or individual developers.

Paid plans start at $15/month for up to 100,000 events, $50/month for 500,000 events, and $250/month for 3 million events. Nonprofits and open-source projects can benefit from discounted pricing at just $5/month.

10. New Relic

New Relic UI Screenshot

New Relic is a more extensive alternative to Airbrake, offering an all-in-one observability platform beyond error tracking. While Airbrake focuses on error and performance monitoring, New Relic provides additional features such as distributed tracing, real user monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and application performance monitoring.

New Relic’s errors inbox allows you to manage errors efficiently with customizable filters and priority settings. Although similar to Airbrake’s issue tracking, New Relic’s integration across the stack offers deeper insights. With support for over 750 platforms, it’s ideal if you need broad integration and full-stack observability.

🌟 Key features

  • Application performance monitoring
  • Infrastructure monitoring
  • Log management
  • Real user monitoring
  • Distributed tracing
  • OpenTelemetry support

➕ Pros

  • Provides a unified platform with over 30 capabilities
  • AI-driven insights help streamline incident management
  • Comprehensive integration capabilities across hundreds of platforms.
  • Delivers full-stack visibility from infrastructure to real user interactions.

➖ Cons

  • Relatively expensive for teams dealing with large data volumes.
  • The broad range of features can be overwhelming and require time to set up effectively.

💲 Pricing

New Relic offers a free tier with 100 GB of data ingestion per month and access for one user. Paid plans start on a pay-as-you-go basis at $0.30 per GB of data ingested, with advanced functionalities offered in pro and enterprise plans for larger organizations.

12. LogRocket

Screenshot of LogRocket UI

LogRocket is an error monitoring and front-end analytics platform that helps you understand user behaviour, identify bugs, and improve web and mobile applications.

LogRocket has session replay, which lets you visually track user interactions, making diagnosing and reproducing issues easier. It also offers product analytics, which provides detailed insights into user behaviour within your app.

This dual focus on technical and usability issues makes identifying and resolving bugs easier, giving it a clear edge over Airbrake.

🌟 Key features

  • Session replay
  • Product analytics
  • Error tracking
  • Front-end performance monitoring

➕ Pros

  • Includes session replay and advanced UX analytics
  • Offers self-hosting options
  • Supports Android, iOS, and React Native apps
  • Combines user behaviour insights with technical data, aiding both developers and product teams

➖ Cons

  • Limited to front-end monitoring, lacking back-end visibility

💲 Pricing

LogRocket’s free plan offers 1,000 sessions per month with 1-month data retention. The team plan starts at $69/month for 10,000 sessions, offering essential features like session replay and error reporting. To unlock AI-powered insights and extended data retention, you’ll need the professional plan at $295/month. Enterprise solutions are available for larger teams, but costs can escalate with higher session volumes and specific requirements.

12. SigNoz

Screenshot of SigNoz

SigNoz is an open-source, full-stack observability platform with broader functionality than Airbrake. SigNoz offers helpful features such as application performance monitoring, distributed tracing, log management, and customizable dashboards. This makes it a strong alternative if you seek a unified observability solution.

SigNoz's OpenTelemetry-native approach sets it apart from Airbrake, as it allows you to avoid vendor lock-in and fully leverage OpenTelemetry's extensive ecosystem for logs, metrics, and traces.

🌟 Key features

  • APM and distributed tracing
  • Log management
  • Custom metrics and dashboards
  • Exception tracking with stack traces
  • Alerts and monitoring across services

➕ Pros

  • Can be self-hosted or used via SigNoz Cloud
  • Advanced querying capabilities with PromQL and ClickHouse
  • Predictable, usage-based pricing without per-user or per-host fees
  • Native support for OpenTelemetry

➖ Cons

  • Feature-rich environment can feel overwhelming if you don’t need the full observability stack

💲 Pricing

SigNoz offers a free community edition for self-hosting, providing full control over your observability setup. The team's plan starts at $199 per month, including APM, log management, and distributed tracing, with 15 days of retention for logs and traces. The enterprise plan offers custom pricing and additional features such as SSO, SAML, and private cloud deployment, making it suitable for larger organizations with advanced security and compliance needs.

13. Datadog

Screenshot of Datadog

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud monitoring and security platform known for its wide range of observability features. It provides visibility across the entire tech stack, from infrastructure and applications to security. With tools like session replay and security monitoring, Datadog goes beyond traditional error tracking, offering deep insights and performance analysis across distributed systems.

Datadog also makes monitoring user experiences easy with its no-code end-to-end testing via a web recorder. Additionally, you can track regional performance through location-based monitoring and customizable metrics, giving you clear insights into how your applications perform in different areas. With over 750 integrations, Datadog is a flexible, adaptable solution that fits smoothly into various tech environments.

🌟 Key features

  • Infrastructure monitoring
  • Application performance monitoring
  • Log management
  • Real user monitoring
  • Synthetic monitoring
  • Security monitoring

➕ Pros

  • Provides a unified platform that brings together metrics, logs, and traces, offering a holistic view of system health.
  • Extensive integrations with over 750 tools and platforms.
  • Customizable dashboards and advanced AI-driven insights for alerting and anomaly detection.
  • User-friendly with options for no-code testing and session replay, broadening its accessibility.

➖ Cons

  • Pricing can become expensive quickly, especially with high data volumes
  • Initial setup and configuration can be time-consuming due to the platform's extensive feature set.

💲 Pricing

Datadog's pricing is tiered, starting with a free plan that includes one-day metric retention for up to five hosts. The pro plan begins at $15 per host per month, offering 15-month metric retention, 750+ integrations, and pre-built dashboards.

The enterprise plan starts at $23 per host per month for more advanced needs, adding features like machine learning-based alerts and live process monitoring. DevSecOps plans start at $22 per host, focusing on security, with the top-tier plan costing $34 per host per month. While flexible, the pricing structure can quickly escalate based on the services and volume of data monitored, making budgeting more complex for larger teams.

Final thoughts

So far, we've looked at the alternatives to Airbrake. As we conclude, it's important to understand that the ideal tool varies for each team due to their specific requirements. To get a good idea of which tools to use, try the trial versions. Testing different options through free trials can help you make an informed decision.

Some tools are open-source and can be self-hosted, but they require more resources for maintenance. If you're undecided, consider starting with Better Stack, which you can use for free.

Author's avatar
Article by
Stanley Ulili
Stanley is a freelance web developer and researcher from Malawi. He loves learning new things and writing about them to understand and solidify concepts. He hopes that by sharing his experience, others can learn something from them too!
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Licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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