BetterStack vs LogRocket for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

BetterStack Overview

BetterStack bundles uptime monitoring, log management, and incident handling into one managed platform. The value proposition is practical: know when your site is down, search your logs when something breaks, and notify the right people when incidents happen.

The uptime monitoring checks your endpoints from global locations and alerts you via Slack, email, SMS, or phone call. The log management (Logtail) gives you a central place to ship and search your application logs. The status pages look polished out of the box. And the incident management includes on-call scheduling and escalation policies.

I got BetterStack running in about 15 minutes. Added my URLs, set up Slack notifications, and published a status page. The whole process felt like it was designed for someone who has better things to do than configure monitoring tools all day. Which, as a solo developer, I do.

LogRocket Overview

LogRocket records user sessions in your frontend application. Every click, scroll, mouse movement, network request, console log, and state management change gets captured. When a user reports a bug, you watch their session replay and see exactly what happened.

The power of LogRocket is in the debugging workflow. Instead of reading a bug report that says "the checkout page doesn't work," you watch the user's session. You see them fill out the form, click submit, get a network error, try again, get frustrated, and leave. You see the exact API call that failed, the response it returned, and the console error that appeared. That's worth a lot when you're trying to reproduce an issue.

The free tier gives you 1,000 sessions per month. The paid tier starts at $99/month, which is the main barrier for solo developers. Session-based pricing also means busier apps pay more.

Key Differences

What they monitor. BetterStack monitors your infrastructure from the outside. Is the endpoint responding? How fast? What's in the logs? LogRocket monitors the user experience from the inside. What is the user doing? What are they seeing? Where are they getting stuck? These perspectives are complementary, not overlapping.

Session replay. LogRocket's core feature. BetterStack doesn't offer session replay. If you need to watch what users actually do in your app, LogRocket is the tool. BetterStack can tell you that your API returned a 500 error, but not that the user clicked the button five times in frustration before giving up.

Uptime monitoring. BetterStack's core feature. LogRocket doesn't monitor uptime. If your site goes down at 3 AM, BetterStack calls your phone. LogRocket wouldn't know because there are no sessions to record when the site is unreachable.

Status pages. BetterStack includes them. LogRocket doesn't. Having a public page where users can check if your service is operational is a professional touch that costs nothing extra with BetterStack.

Pricing for solo developers. BetterStack's free tier is more practical. You get uptime monitoring for multiple endpoints without paying anything. LogRocket's 1,000 free sessions per month sounds generous, but sessions get consumed quickly once you have real traffic. The jump to $99/month is steep for a solo developer. BetterStack's paid tier starts at $24/month, which is more accessible.

Backend vs frontend focus. BetterStack works regardless of your frontend framework. It monitors URLs and ingests server logs. LogRocket requires SDK integration in your frontend application and is designed specifically for JavaScript apps (React, Vue, Angular). If your project doesn't have a heavy frontend, LogRocket offers limited value.

When to Choose BetterStack

• You need to know when your site goes down, immediately
• A public status page for users is important
• You want centralized log management for your server and application logs
• Budget is a consideration and you need a cheaper starting point
• Your project has backend-heavy architecture or multiple services to monitor

When to Choose LogRocket

• Frontend user experience debugging is your primary pain point
• You need to reproduce bugs that are hard to describe in text
• You're building a complex frontend (React SPA, dashboard app) where UI bugs are common
• Understanding user behavior and drop-off points matters for your business
• You have budget for the $99/month plan and get enough value from session data

The Verdict

For most solo developers, BetterStack is the more practical first choice. Uptime monitoring is universally valuable. Every web project benefits from knowing when it's down and having log management for debugging. BetterStack covers those basics at a lower price point with a more useful free tier.

LogRocket is the better choice if your specific problem is frontend debugging. If users regularly report issues that you can't reproduce, if your app has complex interactive flows, or if you need to understand why people abandon certain pages, session replay is genuinely powerful.

But here's the practical consideration. At $99/month, LogRocket is the most expensive monitoring tool a solo developer would typically add. BetterStack's free tier plus Sentry's free tier (for error tracking) gives you more total monitoring coverage for $0 than LogRocket alone gives you for $99.

My recommendation: start with BetterStack for uptime monitoring and logs (free), add Sentry for error tracking (free), and consider LogRocket later if you have specific frontend debugging pain that those two tools don't solve. You'll be better monitored at no cost than jumping straight to LogRocket's paid tier.