Sentry and Datadog get compared a lot, but they're not really the same category of tool. Sentry is an error tracker that expanded into performance. Datadog is an infrastructure monitor that expanded into everything.
Comparing them is like comparing a debugger to a dashboard. Both are useful. The question is which problem you're solving.
Sentry: What It Does Best
- Error tracking — catches unhandled exceptions with full stack traces, grouped by root cause
- Session replay — see exactly what the user did before the error occurred
- Release tracking — know which deploy introduced the regression
- Performance monitoring — transaction tracing with P50/P75/P95 (secondary feature)
- Price: Free (5K errors/month). Team at $26/month.
Datadog: What It Does Best
- Infrastructure monitoring — CPU, memory, disk, network across all hosts
- APM — distributed tracing across microservices with automatic service maps
- Log management — centralized logs with correlation to traces
- 700+ integrations — connects to everything out of the box
- Price: From $15/host/month (infra) + $31/host (APM). Team of 5: $300-800/month.
Head-to-Head
| Sentry | Datadog | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary strength | Error tracking | Infrastructure + APM |
| Error grouping | Excellent (best-in-class) | Basic |
| Session replay | Yes | Yes (RUM add-on) |
| Distributed tracing | Basic | Excellent |
| Infrastructure metrics | No | Excellent |
| Log management | No | Yes |
| Free tier | 5K errors/month | 14-day trial only |
| Cost (small team) | $26-80/month | $300-800/month |
| Setup time | 15 minutes | 2-4 hours |
| Next.js SDK | Excellent | Partial (agent overhead) |
When to Choose Sentry
- Your main question is "what errors are happening and which deploy caused them?"
- You need session replay to debug frontend issues
- Budget is under $100/month for monitoring
- You're a frontend-heavy team (React, Next.js, Vue)
When to Choose Datadog
- You run 20+ microservices and need distributed tracing
- Infrastructure visibility (CPU, memory, containers) is critical
- You need centralized log management
- Budget is $500+/month and you have a DevOps team
When to Choose Neither (or Both + Something Else)
If you run Next.js and your main question is "are my API routes healthy right now?" — neither Sentry nor Datadog is optimized for that. Sentry tracks errors after they happen. Datadog is overkill for API health monitoring.
Nurbak Watch fills this gap: real-time API monitoring with P50/P95/P99 latency, error rates per endpoint, and WhatsApp/Slack alerts in under 10 seconds. $29/month. Works great alongside Sentry (errors + API health for $55/month total).
// instrumentation.ts
import { initWatch } from '@nurbak/watch'
export function register() {
initWatch({
apiKey: process.env.NURBAK_WATCH_KEY,
})
}