Sentry vs LogRocket for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Sentry Overview

Sentry is the gold standard for application error tracking. When something breaks in production, Sentry captures the full stack trace, browser info, user context, and a trail of breadcrumbs showing what happened before the crash. You get an alert, click through, and usually have enough context to reproduce the bug without asking the user a single question.

I've had Sentry running on every project I've shipped for the past few years. The free tier gives you 5,000 errors per month, which is more than enough for most solo projects. The performance monitoring shows slow transactions and database queries. Release tracking tells you if a new deploy introduced regressions. And session replay lets you watch a recording of what the user did leading up to the error.

The grouping is smart too. Duplicate errors get collapsed into issues, so you're not drowning in noise. You see one issue with a count of how many users hit it, which makes prioritization easy.

LogRocket Overview

LogRocket is primarily a session replay tool that also does error tracking. The core idea is different from Sentry. Instead of starting from the error and working backward, LogRocket lets you watch a video-like replay of every user session. You see their mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, network requests, console logs, and Redux/Vuex state changes in real time.

When a user reports a bug, you pull up their session and literally watch what they did. No more "can you describe the steps to reproduce?" conversations. The error tracking is decent, but it's not as deep as Sentry's. Where LogRocket shines is in understanding user behavior and debugging UI issues that are hard to reproduce from a stack trace alone.

The free tier gives you 1,000 sessions per month. For a small project, that might be enough. But session-based pricing gets expensive fast once you have real traffic.

Key Differences

Debugging approach. Sentry works from error to context. You see the stack trace, then look at breadcrumbs and session replay to understand what happened. LogRocket works from session to error. You watch the full user journey and spot where things went wrong. Both get you to the same place, but the starting point matters.

Session replay depth. LogRocket's session replay is its core product and it shows. You get DOM recording, network request inspection, console logs, and state management integration all in one timeline. Sentry added session replay more recently, and while it works, it's not as polished or feature-rich.

Error tracking depth. Sentry wins here hands down. Source map support, release tracking, issue assignment, custom tags, performance traces. Sentry was built for error tracking. LogRocket bolted it on.

Pricing for solo developers. Sentry's free tier is more generous for what solo developers actually need. 5,000 errors per month versus 1,000 sessions per month. Once you need to pay, Sentry starts at $26/month while LogRocket jumps to $99/month. That's a significant difference when you're watching every dollar.

Frontend vs full-stack. LogRocket is heavily frontend-focused. It's phenomenal for React, Vue, and Angular apps. Sentry covers frontend, backend, mobile, and serverless. If you're debugging a Django API or a Node.js backend, Sentry is the obvious pick.

When to Choose Sentry

• You need detailed error tracking across your full stack, not just the frontend
• You want generous free tier pricing that actually works for solo projects
• Performance monitoring for slow API endpoints matters to you
• You're building backend-heavy apps where session replay is less useful
• You want release tracking to catch regressions after deploys

When to Choose LogRocket

• Your app is frontend-heavy and bugs are hard to reproduce from stack traces alone
• You want to understand user behavior patterns, not just errors
• You need to debug UI/UX issues where watching the session is faster than reading logs
• Your team has budget for the $99/month plan and gets enough value from session insights
• You're optimizing conversion funnels and want to see where users drop off

The Verdict

For solo developers, Sentry is the better choice. The free tier is more generous, the error tracking is deeper, it covers your entire stack, and it costs less when you need to upgrade. You'll catch and fix bugs faster with Sentry's stack traces and breadcrumbs than you will scrubbing through session replays.

LogRocket is a great product, but it solves a slightly different problem. It's more about understanding user behavior and debugging visual issues. If you're building a complex frontend app and you have the budget, it's worth adding on top of Sentry. But if you're picking one tool, Sentry gives you more bang for your buck as a solo developer.

My recommendation: start with Sentry on the free tier. If you find yourself constantly asking "but what did the user actually do?", then consider adding LogRocket later.