Spike protection caps sudden bursts of exceptions so a bad deploy or an error loop doesn't balloon your bill. When an application starts sending far more exceptions than usual, Better Stack temporarily keeps only a sample of them and turns sampling off automatically once the volume returns to normal.

Sampled-away exceptions are dropped before ingestion. They are never stored and you're never billed for them.

Enable spike protection

1. Go to Errors → Applications → your application → Advanced settings.
2. In the Spike protection section, turn on Spike protection.
3. Keep the default Baseline multiplier of 10x, or adjust it to change the sensitivity. Lower values start sampling sooner, higher values allow bigger bursts before sampling kicks in.

What happens during a spike

Better Stack continuously compares the application's incoming exception rate against the maximum expected volume calculated from its recent traffic. When the rate exceeds it:

• Incoming exceptions are sampled uniformly at random, keeping the ingested volume close to the expected maximum. As the spike grows or fades, the kept share adjusts automatically.
• Your team members are notified that sampling started.
• The Advanced settings page shows the share of exceptions currently being kept and since when.
• Sampling stops within a few minutes of the volume dropping back under the limit.

Because sampling is random, every error group keeps a proportional share of its occurrences. New errors still surface during a spike, and trend charts keep their shape.

How is the limit calculated?

Better Stack watches the application's exceptions over the last 7 days in 5-minute buckets.

• The limit is the weekly average plus the Baseline multiplier times the standard deviation.
• It never drops below 1.5 times the average, or below 125 exceptions per 5 minutes, so low-volume applications get generous headroom.
• Unusually high buckets are capped and previously sampled periods are excluded. A spike can't raise its own limit.
• Spike protection starts evaluating once the application has at least 4 hours of traffic.

Preview the limit on your traffic

Click View sampling history next to the setting to chart your application's exceptions against the current limit over the last week and check whether normal traffic stays safely under it.

Need help?

Please let us know at hello@betterstack.com.
We're happy to help! 🙏