My test bookstore shipped a release with a new bug: every fifth card payment failed with a PaymentGatewayError. It was one bug, thrown from one line of code. Rollbar turned it into two items. Raygun turned it into two groups. The two tools split the same bug for completely different reasons, and that small coincidence says a lot about how each one thinks.
Rollbar split the error because its stack trace changed shape, with more or fewer framework frames under my code from one request to the next. Raygun split it because the error message included the amount that failed, "charge of 44 USD" in one group and "35.5 USD" in the other. Rollbar keys on the stack and Raygun on the message, and you'll want to know which one you're dealing with before you trust either tool's error count.
The bigger difference is scope. Rollbar is one focused error tracker, with session replay built in and a knack for connecting errors to the deploys that caused them. Raygun sells a trio, Crash Reporting, Real User Monitoring and APM, which between them cover more ground and share very little with one another.
The sections below run both tools through the same jobs: setup, capturing errors, debugging, grouping, replay and user monitoring, releases, performance, AI and price. Each one ends with a verdict, and every result comes from my hands-on test in October 2026.
| Job | Better in my test | Deciding factor |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Rollbar | A single project took both SDKs; Raygun wanted two apps plus a load-order fix |
| Capturing errors | Rollbar | Raygun missed the uncaught promise rejection |
| Debugging | Split | Raygun keeps server breadcrumbs per request; Rollbar replays the failing request |
| Grouping | Neither | Both split the new error, for different reasons |
| Replay and user monitoring | Split | Rollbar records video replays; Raygun measures page speed per route |
| Releases and regressions | Rollbar | Suspected deploys and working deploy tracking on the trial |
| Performance | Raygun, with caveats | RUM found slow pages; Rollbar has no performance data |
| AI | Not compared | I ran neither tool's AI |
| Price | Rollbar | Free plan and paid plans from $9; Raygun starts at $40 per product |
I tested both tools on monitoring-lab, a bookstore I built to break in known ways. It has an Express 5 API on SQLite, a Vite storefront, a price service that fails on cue and a report job that errors every minute. Server and browser each load a thin per-tool adapter, which kept the failures identical for Rollbar and Raygun.
The planted problems:
A script sent alice, bob and carol through the shop, over the API and in headless Chromium, across three versions:
| Version | What it tested |
|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | Setup, capture on both sides, source maps, breadcrumbs, replay and user monitoring |
| 1.1.0 | The coupon crash marked as fixed, then shipped unfixed |
| 1.2.0 | A broken release: checkout stalls on one query, and one card charge in five fails |
Rollbar ran rollbar on the server and rollbar/replay from rollbar 4.1.0 in the browser. Raygun ran raygun 2.2.10 and raygun4js 3.1.4, plus raygun-apm with its agent for one APM run.
Points that affect the results:
Rollbar takes both SDKs in one project, and its Node.js setup page is four short steps. My new project still stumbled. Its setup snippets carried tokens belonging to an old project I had removed, while the fresh project had no tokens of its own, so I had to generate them manually before any event was accepted. Choosing an SDK is a one-at-a-time affair too:
You choose Node.js here, then return through "Select different SDK" for the browser snippet.
Raygun asks you to split the app into separate applications, each with its own API key and error list. Onboarding also takes one product at a time:
Step 1 explains that applications let you monitor each part of a system separately, so I created one for the API and one for the storefront. Step 3 then waits for a first event before letting you leave.
The browser library needed more work. raygun4js only starts once the browser's load event has fired, and my storefront imports its monitoring module later than that, so the library never started. I copied the approach of Raygun's CDN snippet, queuing calls and importing the library after the page loaded, and data started flowing. Raygun's npm instructions don't mention this.
Verdict: Rollbar. Once the token problem was fixed, one project covered the whole app. Raygun needed two applications and a workaround before the storefront sent anything.
Both tools received errors from both sides. Rollbar's items list showed all 11 together after the first release:
Six server items sit next to five browser items, and the browser rows carry a replay icon. Failures the storefront handled and reported on purpose, like a checkout request that came back with a 500, show up as well, since the browser SDK can send handled errors.
Raygun showed each side in its own application. The server list had five groups:
The promise rejection, "Recommendation engine timed out", is missing, even with uncaught exception reporting switched on. Rollbar caught it. In one of my Rollbar runs it arrived at the "debug" level, though, with only an is_uncaught attribute to show it crashed, so check its level before you filter by severity.
Verdict: Rollbar. It caught every planted error on both sides, in one list.
Both tools turned the minified storefront code back into source once they had the maps. Rollbar can't fetch maps from localhost, so I uploaded them with a script, and the wishlist crash pointed at pages.js:122:13 with the failing line highlighted.
Raygun's upload endpoint requires a Personal Access Token, a paid-only feature, so on the trial every map went in through the web uploader:
Every file arrives unlabelled, so you type its full URL by hand, and you repeat that after each build because file names change. Twice my labels got swapped between files. Once they were right, reprocessing the error gave the same pages.js:122 result Rollbar did.
Neither tool showed code for server frames. Rollbar listed one project frame and collapsed the rest, and Raygun gave server.js:150 and "1 framework frame".
On the server, the tools disagree on what belongs with an error. Raygun scopes breadcrumbs to one request:
You get POST /checkout, "checkout started" and "book found", and nothing from other shoppers.
Rollbar's server telemetry covers the whole process instead:
Bob's checkout crash lists carol's and alice's orders and other price lookups in the same timeline. On a later payment error for alice, her name appeared 8 times in the last 100 events, bob's 6 times and carol's 5.
Rollbar makes up for some of that with a feature Raygun doesn't have. It rebuilds the failing request as a command you can run:
Paste it into a terminal and you resend bob's failed checkout, headers, coupon and all, against your own server.
When the storefront's checkout request fails, it creates a browser error, and the server records the crash behind it. Neither tool connects the two. Rollbar keeps them as separate items, and its Related tab only lists items with similar titles. Raygun keeps them in separate applications. Neither has distributed tracing to carry the link across.
Verdict: a split. Raygun's request-scoped breadcrumbs make server errors easier to read. Rollbar's curl replay makes them faster to reproduce, and its source map upload works on a trial.
Rollbar kept the browser failure and its server cause as unrelated items, and Raygun put them in different applications. Better Stack joined them. One shopper's checkout appeared on a single timeline, with the replay, 30 browser spans and 7 server spans from the same visit:
From the server crash, "View related" jumps to that visitor's replay, the request's logs or its spans, so you go from symptom to cause without guessing which item matches which.
On the first release, both tools grouped well, with one exception in Raygun. The storefront's failed book loads come from one bug, with different book IDs in the URL, and Raygun gave each URL its own group:
Look at the ApiError rows for /books/0, /404, /99 and /1234. Oddly, the orders tracking error, which also has an ID in its URL, stayed in one group.
The bad release tested both tools harder, since its checkout code changed the stack traces of old bugs:
| Error in the bad release | Rollbar | Raygun |
|---|---|---|
| New payment error | 2 items, split by framework frames | 2 groups, split by amount |
| Coupon crash | Original plus 2 new items | Original plus 1 new group |
| Out-of-stock error | 1 new item instead of a reopen | Original plus 2 new groups |
Rollbar's version page for the release shows the effect:
The "New" tab counts five items, although the release added just one bug. Raygun's deployment page for the same release also listed five new errors: the two payment groups plus three duplicates.
What this shows is how each default works, in my app. Rollbar's fingerprint includes framework frames under your code, so stacks that vary between requests produce new items. Raygun's Node grouping includes the message, so values in messages produce new groups. Neither result proves one tool groups worse everywhere, and both let you change the rule, Rollbar with custom fingerprinting and Raygun with custom grouping. Rollbar's other grouping and triage controls get more attention in our BugSnag vs Rollbar article.
Verdict: neither. Each split the same new bug in two, and each needs configuration before its counts can be trusted.
The two tools take different routes to seeing what your users experience.
Rollbar records sessions and plays them back on the error:
The player sits beside a list of requests with status and timing, clicks with the element they hit and page changes, plus links to other errors from the same visit. The free plan includes 1,000 replays a month.
Raygun has no video replay. Its Real User Monitoring measures pages instead:
A book page took 1.58 s on average next to 285 ms for the home page, and among requests, /search averaged 1.49 s and /prices 2.63 s, matching two of the slow spots I built in. Each visit also gets a session page, laid out as pages visited and minutes spent, and the Customers page rolls sessions and errors up per person:
alice has 10 sessions and 5 errors, so you can tell how often one customer runs into trouble.
Verdict: a split. Rollbar if you want to watch what a user did before an error. Raygun if you want to know which pages and requests are slow for real users.
Both tools tag errors with the version your SDK sends. Deploys are separate in both, and this is where the trial made the biggest difference.
Rollbar's deploy API worked with a project token, and each deploy appeared as a row in the items list and on its own page. Raygun's deployment API needs a Personal Access Token, so on the trial I used the form, and the first save failed:
That attempt included a deployment date from the date picker. The second save, with only the version filled in, worked.
A regression is a bug you've marked as fixed that comes back. I resolved the coupon crash in both tools for the next version, then shipped that version with the crash intact. Both reopened only that error.
Raygun's resolve dialog has an option Rollbar doesn't:
"Discard future occurrences until a newer version is released" is ticked by default, so late events from the old version stop counting once you resolve. Rollbar's Resolve takes a version and a comment.
In both lists, the reopened row just turned active again, with no label. The difference is on the error page. Raygun records the return in its activity feed:
"Error reoccurred" appears next to the version split, 57% on 1.0.0 and 43% on 1.1.0. Rollbar goes a step further:
Besides "Reactivated version: 1.1.0", it names a "Suspected deploy" and links to it. The broken release's payment error got a suspected deploy as well, which answers "should we roll back?" without leaving the error.
Rollbar's "Auto-resolve on deploy", set per environment, resolves every open item when a deploy arrives:
Unfixed bugs get cleared too and return only if they happen again, so each release starts clean, at the cost of rare bugs dropping out of view for a while. Raygun's deployment pages offer a per-release view instead, with tabs for new errors, regressions and errors still occurring.
Verdict: Rollbar. Its suspected deploy is the most direct regression signal either tool gave me, and its deploy tracking worked on the trial. Raygun's discard box is handy, yet without API access, keeping its deployment pages current meant manual, error-prone work.
Both tools hid the reopened coupon crash in their lists, and Raygun made me register each deployment by hand. Better Stack read releases from the SDK and flagged the return where you'd see it first, with a red "Reoccurred" status in the errors list:
Its Releases page built itself from the same events, showing adoption, errors and new errors for each version, with no deploy call or form:
In the broken release, checkout slowed by a factor of over a thousand, and not one exception fired because of it. A tool can only catch that by measuring requests.
Rollbar doesn't measure them. It has no tracing, performance or web vitals product, so the slowdown never appeared. My app's "slow query" warnings reached it only as console lines in server telemetry.
Raygun has two products for this, and neither caught it.
Its RUM release comparison looked at the bad release and reported the opposite:
"1.2.0 is running 34.8% faster than 1.1.0 in median load time" is accurate for full page loads, which didn't change. The slowdown sat in the checkout request, which Compare doesn't include. The RUM request list hinted at it, with /checkout at 438.95 ms on average compared with 199 ms earlier, but that figure mixes every version together.
Raygun APM traces server requests, but it runs as a separate agent next to your app, and in my test it didn't see much:
It ranked POST /checkout among the slowest requests, but "Slowest methods" and "Slowest queries" are empty. SQLite isn't among the databases Raygun's Node.js APM understands, so my slow query was invisible to it in every release. Its traces were mostly idle time, with none of my own functions.
Worse, installing the raygun-apm package broke Crash Reporting. Crashing errors started arriving as "Unknown error", with no message or stack, even with the profiler switched off. The package swaps out JavaScript's built-in Error, so the crash reporter no longer recognizes errors Node throws. Removing the package, or setting RAYGUN_APM_CRASH_REPORTING_INTEGRATION=false, restored normal reports, so the broken release ran with APM switched off.
Verdict: Raygun, with caveats. Its RUM pointed at real slow pages and requests, which is more than Rollbar can show. Read its release comparison carefully, and test APM on Node.js before installing it next to Crash Reporting. For what request tracing catches in the same situation, see our Sentry and Rollbar head-to-head.
Rollbar was blind to the slowdown, Raygun's comparison declared the broken release quicker, and Raygun's agent recorded mostly idle time. Better Stack needed no agent at all, picking up traces from the Sentry SDK the API already had, and from the new payment error, one click showed the cause:
Of that checkout's 2.19 s, a single query used 1.53 s. Its "View logs" link narrowed Live tail to the same request, where my app's slow-query warning appeared right before the failure. All 10 payment failures also stayed in one error, the bug both Rollbar and Raygun had split in two.
I didn't run either tool's AI, so here's what each offers.
Rollbar's "Analyze root cause" button spends AI credits on an analysis, and its documentation describes a beta follow-up that turns the analysis into a pull request. On my trial it wanted GitHub connected before it would start. Rollbar puts a typical analysis at 500 to 700 credits, and paid plans include some.
Raygun offers AI Error Resolution, a per-group button that hands the stack and error details to a language model. Per Raygun's docs, you supply your own OpenAI or Azure OpenAI key. Both vendors also offer MCP servers for outside coding assistants.
Verdict: no winner. Rollbar's AI works inside its own billing, and Raygun's runs on yours. Try both on your own errors.
Rollbar's analysis asked for a GitHub connection first, and Raygun's asks for a model key you pay for. Better Stack's AI SRE comes built in. I asked it what went wrong in the bad release, without giving it my repository:
It separated the two problems: a median jump for the checkout query from 0.13 ms to 2.6 s, and 10 failures in 48 calls to the new payment step. Then it recommended a rollback. The run took about four minutes and cost $0.49.
I read these prices on Rollbar's and Raygun's websites on October 23, 2026. Check both before you buy.
| Rollbar | Raygun | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | ✔: 5,000 occurrences, 1,000 replays, unlimited users | ✘: none |
| Free plan retention | 30 days | Not applicable |
| Trial | 15 days of Advanced in my account | 14 days on any plan |
| API tokens on the trial | ✔: available | ✘: need a paid plan |
| Rollbar Essentials | Raygun errors, Basic | Raygun RUM, Basic | Raygun APM, Basic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price, billed monthly | From $9 | $60 | $120 | $120 |
| Price, billed annually | About 17% less | $40 a month | $80 a month | $80 a month |
| Included volume | From 10,000 occurrences | 100,000 errors | 100,000 sessions | 100,000 traces |
| Users | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Retention | 90 days | 180 days | Not published | Not published |
Rollbar's prices rise with the volume you pick on its slider, and Advanced, from $13 a month, adds RQL queries and 180-day retention. Raygun's error plan throws in 5,000 RUM sessions and 5,000 APM traces at no charge.
| Need | Rollbar | Raygun |
|---|---|---|
| More errors | Higher volume tier or on-demand events | $0.001 per error |
| Session replay | Higher replay volume | ✘: no video replay |
| Page performance | ✘: not offered | RUM, $0.002 per extra session |
| Server tracing | ✘: not offered | APM, $0.002 per extra trace, plus an agent |
| Logs | ✘: needs another product | ✘: needs another product |
| AI | Credit packs from 15,000 credits for $5 a month | Your own OpenAI or Azure OpenAI bill |
For error tracking alone, Rollbar is far cheaper, with a free plan for the whole team and replay included. Raygun costs more, and in return its RUM and APM cover performance that Rollbar can't. All three Raygun Basic products together cost $300 a month, or $200 billed annually. If you'd rather consolidate errors, logs, uptime and on-call, our look at Rollbar against an all-in-one platform covers that trade.
Verdict: Rollbar for most teams. Raygun only pays off if you'll use its RUM.
| Feature | Rollbar | Raygun |
|---|---|---|
| Browser and server in one place | ✔: one project | ✘: one application per part |
| Uncaught promise rejection, Node | ✔: caught | ✘: missed in this test |
| Source maps on a trial | ✔: script upload | ✔: manual upload per file |
| Server source lines | ✘: frames only | ✘: frames only |
| Server breadcrumbs | ✘: process-wide telemetry | ✔: per request |
| Request replay | ✔: curl command | ✘: not offered |
| Browser to server link | ✘: separate items | ✘: separate applications |
| Grouping key in this test | Stack, including framework frames | Message, including values |
| Session replay | ✔: video on the item | ✘: session timeline only |
| Page and request speed | ✘: not offered | ✔: RUM |
| Per-user view | ✔: People page | ✔: Customers page |
| Deploys on the trial | ✔: by API | Form only, failed once |
| Resolve for a future version | ✔: version and comment | ✔: next version, with discard option |
| Regression label in the list | ✘: row turns active | ✘: row turns active |
| Regression detail | ✔: suspected deploy | ✔: activity feed, Regressions tab |
| Auto-resolve on deploy | ✔: per environment | ✘: not found |
| Server tracing | ✘: not offered | ✔: APM, no SQLite support |
| Release performance comparison | ✘: not offered | ✔: RUM Compare, page loads only |
| AI | ✔: Root Cause Analysis, untested | ✔: AI Error Resolution, bring your own key, untested |
| Free plan | ✔: unlimited users | ✘: 14-day trial |
Rollbar is the better pick if errors are your main concern and you want them connected to deploys. One project covers the whole app, replays show what users did, the curl command reproduces server bugs, and suspected deploys answer the roll-back question. It's also much cheaper. Plan to set up custom fingerprinting early, and use something else for performance.
Raygun is the better pick if you also want to know how fast your pages are for real users, and you're happy to manage separate applications for each part of your system. Its RUM was the most useful part of my test, and its request-scoped breadcrumbs keep server errors clean. Expect to pay from day one, because the trial's API restrictions turn source maps and deployments into manual work, and try APM on Node.js in a staging environment first.
This test ran on Node.js and Express. Both vendors support many more platforms, and grouping and APM coverage differ by SDK.
Rollbar and Raygun both missed the slowdown in my bad release, and both split its new error in two. What separates them is everything around those gaps. Rollbar connects each error to a deploy and a replay, in one place, for very little money. Raygun measures more of your app, and leaves you to connect the pieces across three products.
If you need one tool that explains your errors, pick Rollbar. If you need to know how fast your app feels, Raygun's RUM earns its price.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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