Sentry vs Datadog for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Sentry Overview

Sentry is the error tracking platform that shows you exactly what went wrong, where, and why. When your application throws an exception in production, Sentry captures the full stack trace, the user's session data, the breadcrumbs leading up to the error, and the source code context. Instead of digging through logs, you see the error in its full context.

The setup takes minutes. Install the SDK, add your DSN, and errors start flowing into the dashboard. Sentry supports every major language and framework: JavaScript, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, .NET, PHP, and more. Source maps work seamlessly for JavaScript, so you see your original code in stack traces, not minified bundle soup.

I've run Sentry on every production project I've shipped. The free tier gives you 5,000 errors per month, which is plenty for a solo developer's app. The moment something breaks in production, I get an email with the error details and can usually fix it within minutes. Before Sentry, debugging production errors meant searching through log files and guessing.

Datadog Overview

Datadog is the enterprise observability platform that monitors everything: infrastructure metrics, application performance, logs, network traffic, security threats, and real user monitoring. It's the all-in-one monitoring tool that large engineering teams use to understand complex distributed systems.

The feature list is staggering. APM (Application Performance Monitoring) traces requests across microservices. Infrastructure monitoring tracks CPU, memory, and disk across servers. Log management ingests and analyzes billions of log entries. RUM (Real User Monitoring) measures actual user experience. Security monitoring detects threats. Synthetics runs automated tests.

This breadth of features makes Datadog incredibly powerful, but it also makes it expensive and complex. The pricing is per-host, per-feature, per-indexed-log, and per-anything-else. A solo developer running a single app on a single server could accidentally spend $100/month before understanding what they're paying for.

Key Differences

Focus and purpose. Sentry is focused on application-level monitoring: errors, performance, and user impact. Datadog monitors everything: infrastructure, applications, logs, security, and networks. For a solo developer, Sentry's focused approach covers 90% of monitoring needs. Datadog's broad scope is overkill unless you're managing complex infrastructure.

Setup complexity. Sentry installs in minutes. Add the SDK, configure your DSN, deploy, and errors appear in the dashboard. Datadog requires installing an agent on your server, configuring integrations for each service you want to monitor, and setting up dashboards. The initial setup can take hours and requires infrastructure access.

Pricing for solo developers. Sentry's free tier (5,000 errors/month) is genuinely usable for production apps. The Team plan at $26/month is affordable when you outgrow it. Datadog's pricing is designed for teams: $15/host/month for infrastructure, plus $31/host/month for APM, plus $0.10 per million log events. A basic setup easily reaches $50-100/month. For a solo developer, that's hard to justify.

Error tracking depth. Sentry excels here. Error grouping, release tracking, commit integration, issue assignment, and performance profiling all focus on helping you find and fix bugs faster. The session replay feature lets you watch what the user was doing when the error occurred. Datadog has error tracking, but it's one feature among dozens. Sentry's entire product is optimized for this use case.

Infrastructure monitoring. Datadog wins decisively for infrastructure visibility. Server metrics, container health, Kubernetes monitoring, cloud resource tracking, and network performance all come built in. Sentry doesn't monitor infrastructure at all. If you need to know whether your server's CPU is spiking or your database is running out of disk, Datadog handles it. For that type of monitoring, solo developers typically use lighter tools like BetterStack or Grafana.

Dashboards and visualization. Datadog's dashboards are customizable and powerful. You can build complex views combining metrics from different sources. Sentry's dashboard focuses on error trends, performance metrics, and release health. For application debugging, Sentry's focused view is more useful. For infrastructure overview, Datadog's customizable dashboards are more capable.

Alert noise. Sentry's alerting is tuned for developer workflows. You get notified about new errors, regressions, and performance degradations. Datadog's alerting can generate a lot of noise if not carefully configured. Infrastructure metrics, log patterns, and APM traces all can trigger alerts. Without careful tuning, Datadog can become the monitoring tool you learn to ignore.

When to Choose Sentry

• You need error tracking and performance monitoring for your application
• A free tier that covers production use matters for your budget
• Quick setup (minutes, not hours) is important
• You want focused monitoring that shows errors with full context
• You're a solo developer who doesn't need infrastructure-level observability

When to Choose Datadog

• You're managing multiple servers or a Kubernetes cluster
• You need unified infrastructure, APM, and log monitoring
• Your architecture is distributed with microservices
• The budget for $50-100+/month monitoring is available
• You need custom dashboards combining metrics from many sources

The Verdict

For solo developers, Sentry is the clear winner. The free tier covers production use, the setup takes minutes, and the error tracking depth is unmatched. When something breaks in production, Sentry tells you exactly what happened with enough context to fix it quickly. That's all most solo developers need from monitoring.

Datadog is built for engineering teams managing complex infrastructure. If you're a solo developer running one or two servers with a few services, Datadog's power goes unused while its pricing takes your money. The ROI only makes sense when you're managing infrastructure at scale.

My recommendation: install Sentry today. It's free, it takes minutes, and you'll wonder how you ever shipped code without it. If you later need infrastructure monitoring, pair Sentry with BetterStack or Grafana instead of replacing it with Datadog. You'll get better coverage at a fraction of the cost.