TrackJS vs Honeybadger: A Hands-On Error Tracking Comparison for 2026

Neither TrackJS nor Honeybadger traces requests, and my test's worst release was a latency problem. Checkout went from about 15 ms to several seconds, and both tools still found the evidence. TrackJS showed it as one fetch duration buried in a browser error's timeline. Honeybadger let me query my app's slow-query warnings by release and got a count in one line.

That's the kind of team these two are built for: you want errors tracked well, you don't want an observability platform, and you'll take clues where you can find them. TrackJS watches JavaScript in the browser first, and adds a lightweight agent for Node. Before each browser error it logs a step-by-step timeline, it can jump from a broken fetch to the matching server exception, includes an AI Debugger, and bills by page view.

Honeybadger is an independent error tracker covering many languages, and for JavaScript, one package handles both the browser and Node. Its plans bundle Insights for logs and events, uptime monitors, cron check-ins and status pages at a flat monthly price.

Each tool watched the same bookstore's storefront and API for three releases, which makes every section a direct match-up. The few things I left untested, like Honeybadger's uptime checks, are marked where they come up.

You'll see them compared on setup, capture, maps, the error page in each tier, grouping, releases, the slow release, logs, alerts, AI and price.

TrackJS vs Honeybadger: Results at a glance

Every call below comes from one Vite storefront and one Express API, configured by each vendor's docs on trial accounts. Hosting maps publicly or using another backend might flip a couple.

How I tested TrackJS and Honeybadger

monitoring-lab, the app I test every tool on, is a bookshop with its failures built in. The storefront is a Vite app using hash routes, its API is Express over SQLite, a pricing service fails on purpose, and a report job fires each minute. Swapping tools means swapping a browser adapter and a server adapter, nothing else.

Planted failures:

• Browser: adding to the wishlist throws a TypeError, the order-tracking promise rejects uncaught, and API calls come back 404, 500 or 502.
• API: checkout crashes on an unknown coupon, a missing book crashes its route, sold-out books raise a handled OutOfStockError, the price call returns 503, and a recommendations promise rejects.
• Report job: some runs throw.

Traffic comes from alice and bob in headless Chromium, plus carol calling the API directly.

The releases

1.2.0 is the stress test. It's mostly a latency regression with one new error on top, and neither tool measures latency.

SDKs and test limitations

• Different days: Honeybadger ran on October 23 and TrackJS on October 28, with one traffic script. Event counts don't compare directly.
• Environments: my storefront reports "production" and my API "development", which matters for Honeybadger's per-environment settings.
• Not tested: Honeybadger's uptime monitors, check-ins, status pages and Copy for LLM, plus whether either tool's alerts actually arrive.

Terms in each tool

Setup and onboarding

Each product keeps your storefront and API in a single project. Honeybadger reached that point with fewer surprises.

TrackJS: A fast browser agent, a broken Express handler

TrackJS's onboarding runs through agent, applications, team and ignore rules. The browser agent reported on the first page load. Application keys are generated from the name and can't be changed later, and opening the settings page by its URL returned an error page:

The sidebar link to account settings works, so this is a cosmetic slip. The Node agent was a bigger problem. Its 1.3.0 Express error handler drops the options you pass and doesn't hand 5xx errors on, so those requests never got a response. I wrapped it to pass each error on once, and after that every failure both reached TrackJS and returned a 500.

Honeybadger: One package, one key, one setting to know

Honeybadger's single package has browser and server builds that share a project key. On Express, a request handler goes first and an error handler last:

import Honeybadger from '@honeybadger-io/js';

Honeybadger.configure({
  apiKey: process.env.HONEYBADGER_API_KEY,
  environment: process.env.NODE_ENV,
  revision: '<your_release>',
  insights: { enabled: true },
});

Honeybadger ignores the "development" environment unless reportData is on, and the setup page warns you. Its request handler did pass the recommendations rejection to Express after the response had gone, which made my app's final handler log a headers-already-sent error. The server kept running.

Worth turning on: in TrackJS, check that a failing request still gets a response before you trust the Express handler. In Honeybadger, report a deploy for each environment your app uses, since resolve on deploy works per environment.

Setup comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger. One package and one key ran both tiers, and its Express handlers worked as written. TrackJS's browser agent is just as quick, and its server setup needs a fix before you can rely on it.

Error capture

Both tools received every failure on both tiers. The difference is in the noise.

TrackJS: Everything, plus doubles

TrackJS's list held 99 errors in 29 groups after the clean run:

Each row shows its entry type, such as Express, Caught Error, Network Error or Console Error. Two sources of noise stood out. Every failed API call arrived twice, once as TrackJS's own network error and once as my app's error. And my app's headers-already-sent log line became its own group, because TrackJS treats console.error as an error by default.

Honeybadger: Everything, in eight groups

Honeybadger's list after the first hour:

85 notices in eight groups, with environment, sparkline, assignee and a resolve toggle on each row. Nothing is missing, including the recommendations rejection and the failing report job. All the browser's failed API calls share one group, which is tidy here and a problem later, under grouping.

Error capture comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger, narrowly. Both missed nothing. Honeybadger's list had fewer rows for the same bugs, and assignees on each one.

Source maps

My storefront ran on localhost, which neither tool can fetch from.

TrackJS: Public maps, or drop them in by hand

TrackJS reads maps from the script's public URL, optionally behind its IP addresses or a secret header. On localhost it reported the map unavailable, so I dropped the map file onto the stack trace:

The frame switched to src/pages.js line 122 with the source around it. The map lives in your browser only, so after a reload the frame was minified again, and every error you open needs the drop repeated.

Honeybadger: An upload per revision

Honeybadger takes maps through its API with the project key, even on the trial:

curl https://api.honeybadger.io/v1/source_maps \
  -F api_key="$HONEYBADGER_API_KEY" -F revision=1.0.0 \
  -F minified_url="http://localhost:5173/assets/index.js" \
  -F minified_file=@web/dist/assets/index.js

The browser ApiError then showed src/api.js with the lines around the throw and the calling page below.

Source map comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger. A scripted upload works from CI against any host. TrackJS's fetch model is simpler if your maps are already public.

Debugging a browser error

The browser is TrackJS's home ground, and it showed.

TrackJS: A transcript of the page

A browser error opens on a timeline of what happened before it. For the failing checkout, the fetch carries a link to the server:

Server Errors Occurred During This Request opened the coupon crash for that exact request. The Node agent sets a correlation ID on the response and the browser agent records it, so the two tiers join without tracing. Around it sit clicks with the element's HTML, hash navigation, fetches with status and duration, and console lines, plus Errors on Page and Time On Page.

Honeybadger: Automatic breadcrumbs

Honeybadger records clicks with selectors, page changes and every fetch on its own:

The trail is in order and readable, with the app's own breadcrumbs mixed in. Fetches don't link to the server errors they caused.

Browser debugging comparison

Verdict: TrackJS. Its timeline and the link to the server crash answered the checkout failure from one screen. Honeybadger's breadcrumbs cover the order of events and stop there.

Debugging a server error

The coupon crash, seen from the API.

TrackJS: Thin, with borrowed lines

TrackJS's server error shows server.js at 150:45 with no code, and telemetry that starts correctly with "checkout started" and "book found". Below them were older console lines from startup and earlier report runs, because the server's telemetry buffer isn't per request. There's no body, header list or params. The agent adds the host name, OS user name and working directory as metadata by default.

Honeybadger: The payload and the deploy

Honeybadger's server error opens with its location and deploy, and its context and params hold the request:

Under params you'll find the JSON the browser posted, with the bad coupon, and the context section identifies carol and offers to email her. Breadcrumbs for the request follow, and the summary line ends with "after deploy 1.0.0". The backend frame has no code lines here either.

Server debugging comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger. The request body and deploy on the page did more than TrackJS's server view. TrackJS's best server feature is reaching it from the browser.

Error grouping

Grouping is where the two tools take opposite approaches, and each breaks in its own way.

TrackJS: By message

TrackJS groups by message text. Messages that include a book title, a quantity or a run number become separate groups:

Out-of-stock split four ways, each report run got its own row, and in 1.2.0 three failed charges became three groups, one per amount:

A fourth copy came from the browser. Automatic URL grouping helps with network errors TrackJS records itself, and Create Group fixes the rest by hand.

Honeybadger: By class and first stack line

For Honeybadger, the exception's class and its first stack frame decide the group. The payment error stayed one group across every amount:

Out-of-stock stayed one group across books too, titled with the latest message. The catch is the browser. My app throws every failed request from one helper, so unrelated API failures all landed under a single ApiError row.

Grouping comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger. Its rule kept every server bug in one row through all three releases. Give browser API failures their own classes if you use it, or that one group will hide different problems.

TrackJS split the payment bug by amount, and Honeybadger merged different API failures into one row. Better Stack kept the 1.2.0 payment failures together without merging unrelated errors:

Ten rejected charges share one group, and the line that threw is on the page. Different amounts didn't create rows, and other errors kept their own.

Track one bug per row

Releases and regressions

Before 1.1.0, I set the coupon crash to fixed in each tool. Then the same bug shipped again.

TrackJS: The label doesn't move

TrackJS lets you tag an error with a status such as Fixed or Won't Fix, or type your own, and none of them takes a version:

Five fresh coupon errors arrived on 1.1.0, and the label still read Fixed. Its versions chart showed 1.1.0 in red, which you'd see only by opening the error. No notification covers a Fixed error coming back.

Honeybadger: Reopened, without a note

Honeybadger's resolve toggle promises an alert if the error happens again. Two minutes into 1.1.0 traffic, the coupon error was Unresolved:

"after deploy 1.1.0" on the page names the release. The list row had no reopened label, and the History tab skipped the reopen.

Resolve errors on deploy

Before 1.2.0, I enabled the project setting that resolves every error at each deploy:

The API's deploy cleared the six backend errors, and the browser's two stayed, because they belong to "production". A second deploy call handled them. Every bug that recurred in 1.2.0 came back as Unresolved, which gives you a per-release list of what's still broken.

Release comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger. It reopened the bug, named the deploy, and can reset the list each release. TrackJS's Fixed records intent and never changes on its own.

TrackJS kept the coupon bug marked Fixed, and Honeybadger reopened it without a label or a history entry. Better Stack's list flagged it when 1.1.0 arrived:

The returning bug carries a red "Reoccurred" tag, and no other row changed. You notice it while scanning, with nothing else to open.

See which bugs came back

The slow release

Neither tool measures request time, so 1.2.0's slow checkout is a test of what clues each leaves.

TrackJS: One slow fetch, and a misleading count

Inside one browser error's timeline, the checkout request took a little over four seconds, where 1.0.0 needed around 15 ms. The server's payment error carried my app's slow-query warning in its telemetry. Checkouts that were merely slow, without failing, never reached TrackJS. The Versions page then ranked 1.2.0 as the healthiest release:

68 errors against 102 for 1.0.0, because fewer checkouts got far enough to fail. Read error counts per release with that in mind.

Honeybadger: A gap, then a query

The payment error's breadcrumbs carry relative times. Between "checkout started" and "book found", about 2.4 seconds passed, which is the slow query. Insights then let me count it:

filter level::str == "warn" | stats count() as count by message::str, revision::str

The result pinned both 1.2.0 problems to the release:

The slow-query warning appeared 44 times and the gateway retry warning 36 times, all on 1.2.0. That depends on your app logging those warnings, since Honeybadger has no timing of its own here.

Slow release comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger, narrowly. A query over warnings by release turned a hunch into a number. Neither tool would have flagged the slowdown without my app's own logging.

TrackJS showed one slow fetch, and Honeybadger counted warnings my app chose to log. Better Stack traced the 1.2.0 checkout directly:

That 2.19 s request breaks into a 1.53 s book lookup and a 660 ms failed charge, among smaller spans. Both problems are measured whether or not the app logs a warning.

Measure slow requests with traces

Logs and querying

Honeybadger has a place for logs. TrackJS keeps console lines on errors.

TrackJS: Console lines as telemetry

TrackJS records console output on both tiers and shows it in each error's timeline. There's no log search, no query language and no events outside errors.

Honeybadger: Insights and BadgerQL

Insights collects logs, notices, console lines and custom events in one stream:

BadgerQL filters and aggregates any of it, and a sum over my metric events returned checkout revenue and order counts. With console capture on and my adapter sending log events too, each line arrived twice, so pick one. The editor's auto-closing of quotes and brackets made typing queries fiddly.

Logs comparison

Verdict: Honeybadger. It stores and queries logs and events, which TrackJS doesn't attempt.

Alerts and uptime

I connected no alert channel in either tool and didn't try Honeybadger's uptime checks.

Each TrackJS application has its own alert settings:

Daily and weekly summaries start on, and alerts for new errors, trending errors and rising error rates go to email, Slack or Teams. "New" means a new message, so each fresh payment amount would alert and a returning Fixed bug wouldn't. Honeybadger promises an alert when a resolved error returns, and includes uptime monitors, cron check-ins and status pages in every plan, the free one included.

Verdict: Not compared. Nothing was delivered. On paper, Honeybadger covers returning bugs, uptime and scheduled jobs, while TrackJS's alerts follow its message grouping.

AI-assisted debugging

TrackJS's AI Debugger runs inside the product. Honeybadger offers Copy for LLM, which I didn't use, so this covers TrackJS.

TrackJS: Careful, and honest about its limits

Unless you disable it, the AI Debugger sends a scrubbed copy of each error to OpenAI, minus user IDs and IP addresses. For the 1.2.0 payment failure, it named a cause and then listed fixes:

It located the throw on line 173 of the server, linked it to release 1.2.0, and flagged the slow book lookup as its own latency problem. It trusted the "upstream timeout" message and missed that every fifth charge fails, since it can't see code. For the wishlist crash, it weighed two explanations and admitted the event lacked the source code to pick one.

Honeybadger: Copy for your own assistant

Copy for LLM places an error's details on your clipboard for any assistant. Its usefulness depends on that assistant and what code it can read.

Verdict: Not compared. TrackJS's debugger was cautious and kept the slowdown separate from the payment bug. Honeybadger leaves AI to the tools you already use.

TrackJS's debugger reasoned from one event, and Honeybadger leaves the work to your clipboard. Better Stack's AI SRE considered the whole 1.2.0 release:

It traced the slowdown to checkout's query and found 10 of 48 charges failing, every one on 1.2.0. That took roughly four minutes and $0.49, and it drew on traces and logs across the whole release.

Explain a release with AI SRE

Pricing

TrackJS charges by page view, with errors capped per minute and never billed. Honeybadger sells flat plans by error volume with Insights and uptime bundled.

I checked both pricing pages on November 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm before you buy.

Free plans and trials

Entry-level paid plans

What costs extra

Comparing the actual cost

For a small app, Honeybadger is cheaper at every step. Its free plan covers one developer, and Team at $26 a month gives the whole team 50,000 errors, 90 days of history and uptime checks. TrackJS's Starter is $45 a month on a yearly plan with 10 days of history.

TrackJS's model has one advantage: a release that throws thousands of errors costs nothing extra, because only page views count. Honeybadger's errors count against the quota, so a bad deploy can use a month's allowance quickly. Our TrackJS vs Raygun comparison sets page-view pricing against per-product tiers.

Verdict: Honeybadger. It costs less, keeps data longer, and bundles uptime. TrackJS's price is the more predictable one on a bad day.

Full feature comparison

Which should you choose?

Both are focused error trackers without tracing. TrackJS goes deep on the browser, and Honeybadger spreads across the stack.

Choose TrackJS if the browser is where your bugs live

• You reproduce from what the user did. The timeline shows each click, route change and fetch with its duration before the error.
• You want the server crash behind a failed fetch. The correlation link finds it without tracing.
• You'd like a careful AI first pass. The AI Debugger is built in and stays within what the event shows.

The trade-offs: an Express handler that needs fixing, message grouping that splits on values, a Fixed label with no memory, short retention and no free plan. Our Sentry vs TrackJS comparison weighs it against a full platform.

Choose Honeybadger if you want the whole app covered for a small bill

• You run more than a front end. One package covers the browser and Node, with server request bodies on each error.
• You want an honest list after each deploy. Server bugs stayed in one group, returning bugs reopened, and deploys show on each error.
• You need logs, uptime or cron checks too. Insights, monitors, check-ins and status pages come in the same plan.

Expect no tracing or replay, no server code on stack frames, one browser group that swallows different API failures, and a history that skips reopens. Our Sentry vs Honeybadger comparison puts it next to a tracker that traces requests.

FAQ

Does Honeybadger link browser errors to server errors?

Not directly. Both tiers land in one project and list, but a failed fetch doesn't link to its server error. TrackJS does this with a correlation ID set by its Node agent.

Will TrackJS reopen an error I marked Fixed?

No. The Fixed status is a tag you set, and later events leave it alone. Opening the error shows a chart where the newer version appears in red.

Can either tool show a slow release?

Not directly, since neither traces requests. TrackJS shows fetch durations inside error timelines, and Honeybadger can count your app's own slow-path warnings by revision with BadgerQL.

Which is cheaper?

Honeybadger for most small teams: free for one developer and $26 a month for Team. TrackJS's cheapest tier costs $49 monthly or $45 billed yearly, and that figure holds however many errors a release throws.

Final thoughts

TrackJS was the better tool for one moment, the instant a shopper's checkout failed. Its timeline and the link to the server crash made that failure easy to understand. Honeybadger was the better tool for everything around it: the server payload, grouping that held through a bad release, reopening a bug that came back, and a query that put a number on the slowdown.

So the trade-off is depth in the browser against coverage of the whole app. A front-end team chasing client-side bugs will get more from TrackJS's timeline. A small team running both tiers will get more from Honeybadger's bundle, at about half the price.

Neither one will tell you a release got slower, so log your slow paths and query them yourself.

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