Sentry is the most popular error tracking tool for developers. The free tier is generous, the SDK is excellent, and session replay is genuinely useful. But when your app hits a spike — a bad deploy that throws 100,000 errors in an hour — the pricing model starts to matter.
Pricing Tiers
| Developer (Free) | Team ($26/mo) | Business ($80/mo) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Errors/month | 5,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
| Performance transactions | 10,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
| Session replays | 50 | 500 | 500 |
| Users | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Data retention | 30 days | 90 days | 90 days |
| SSO / SAML | No | No | Yes |
| Custom dashboards | No | Yes | Yes |
| Overage pricing | Events dropped | ~$0.000315/error | ~$0.000290/error |
Real Cost Examples
Solo dev, side project
Errors: ~2,000/month
Plan: Developer (free)
Cost: $0/month ✅Team of 5, production SaaS
Errors: ~80,000/month (50K base + 30K overage)
Plan: Team ($26/month)
Overage: 30,000 × $0.000315 = $9.45
Cost: ~$36/monthTeam of 10, high-traffic app
Errors: ~300,000/month
Plan: Business ($80/month)
Overage: 200,000 × $0.000290 = $58
Cost: ~$138/monthBad day scenario (production incident)
Normal: 50,000 errors/month
Bad deploy: +500,000 errors in one day
Plan: Team ($26/month)
Overage: 500,000 × $0.000315 = $157.50
Cost that month: ~$184
Tip: set a spending cap in Sentry settings to prevent thisWhat the Free Tier Actually Includes
Sentry's free tier is genuinely useful — not a crippled trial:
- 5,000 errors/month (dropped, not billed, when exceeded)
- 10,000 performance transactions/month
- 50 session replays/month
- All SDKs (Next.js, React, Node, Python, etc.)
- Error grouping, stack traces, breadcrumbs
- Release tracking
- 1 user only — that's the main limitation
For a solo developer with a production app, this is enough. The moment you need a second team member with access, you need Team ($26/month).
Sentry vs Competitors: Price Comparison
| Tool | What it does | Starting price | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentry | Error tracking + perf | $26/mo | 5K errors, 1 user |
| Datadog Error Tracking | APM + errors | $31/host/mo | 14-day trial |
| Bugsnag | Error tracking | $59/mo | 7,500 events |
| Rollbar | Error tracking | $13/mo | 5,000 events |
| New Relic Errors | Full observability | $49/user/mo | 100GB data |
Sentry is the best value for dedicated error tracking. Datadog and New Relic are full observability platforms that happen to include error tracking — much more expensive if errors are your primary need.
When Sentry Is Enough (and When It's Not)
Sentry is enough when:
- Error tracking is your primary monitoring need
- You want session replay to debug user-facing issues
- Basic performance monitoring (transaction tracing) is sufficient
- Budget is under $100/month for monitoring
Sentry is NOT enough when:
- You need real-time API health monitoring (uptime, latency P95, error rates per endpoint)
- You need infrastructure metrics (CPU, memory, disk)
- You need instant alerts when an endpoint degrades (Sentry alerts on errors, not latency)
- You need WhatsApp/SMS alerts that bypass DND at 3 AM
The Best Combo for Next.js Teams
Sentry (error tracking + session replay) + Nurbak Watch (API monitoring + instant alerts) = $55/month total for comprehensive coverage.
- Sentry catches errors with stack traces and tells you which deploy caused them
- Nurbak Watch monitors API health (P95, error rates) and alerts in 10 seconds via WhatsApp
- Together: you know WHAT broke (Sentry) and WHEN it started affecting users (Nurbak)
// instrumentation.ts — both tools in one file
import * as Sentry from '@sentry/nextjs'
import { initWatch } from '@nurbak/watch'
export function register() {
Sentry.init({ dsn: process.env.SENTRY_DSN })
initWatch({ apiKey: process.env.NURBAK_WATCH_KEY })
}Nurbak Watch is free during beta.