What is the difference between Datadog and Sentry?

Datadog is best for Engineering teams running complex, multi-service infrastructure at scale, while Sentry is best for Development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly. Datadog starts at $15/host/mo and Sentry starts at $26/mo.

Is Datadog or Sentry cheaper?

Datadog starts at $15/host/mo with a free tier. Sentry starts at $26/mo with a free tier.

Is there a free alternative to Sentry?

Both Datadog and Sentry offer free tiers.

Datadog vs Sentry

Datadog is cloud-scale monitoring and observability platform for infrastructure, applications, and logs, while Sentry is application monitoring platform focused on error tracking, performance monitoring, and session replay. Datadog comes in cheaper, but price alone does not tell the full story. Datadog is built for engineering teams running complex, multi-service infrastructure at scale, whereas Sentry targets development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly.

At a glance

	Datadog	Sentry
Best for	Engineering teams running complex, multi-service infrastructure at scale	Development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly
Starting price	$15/host/mo	$26/mo
Free tier	✓	✓
Open source	—	✓
Free tier available	✓	✓
Open source	—	✓
APM	✓	—
Alerting	✓	—
Alerts	—	✓
Dashboards	✓	—
Error Tracking	—	✓
Infrastructure Monitoring	✓	—
Log Management	✓	—
Performance Monitoring	—	✓
Release Tracking	—	✓
Session Replay	—	✓

Datadog

Strengths

Most comprehensive monitoring platform available
750+ integrations covering virtually every technology
Powerful dashboards and alerting with anomaly detection
Unified view of infrastructure, APM, logs, and security

Weaknesses

Pricing is complex and gets very expensive at scale
Each module (APM, logs, RUM) billed separately
Can be overwhelming to configure and navigate
Vendor lock-in with proprietary query language

Try Datadog → Full review

Sentry

Strengths

Best-in-class error tracking with detailed stack traces
Session replay shows exactly what users experienced
Open source with self-hosting option
Supports virtually every language and framework

Weaknesses

Event-based pricing can get expensive with noisy apps
Performance monitoring is less mature than dedicated APM tools
Alert fatigue if not configured carefully
Self-hosted version requires significant infrastructure

Try Sentry → Full review

The bottom line

Pricing: Both tools offer free tiers, so you can test each before committing. Datadog's free plan: Free for up to 5 hosts with basic metrics. Sentry's free plan: Free for 5K errors and 10K performance events/mo. When you outgrow the free tier, Datadog is the cheaper option at $15/host/mo vs. $26/mo for Sentry — roughly 73% less.

Feature gaps: Datadog offers APM, Alerting and Dashboards that Sentry lacks. Sentry brings Alerts, Error Tracking and Performance Monitoring that Datadog does not have.

Team fit: Datadog is geared toward enterprise teams, while Sentry is aimed at any size teams. Pick the one that matches where your team is today and where it is headed — migrating tools later is always painful.

Open source: Sentry is open source, meaning you can self-host, audit the code, and avoid vendor lock-in. Datadog is proprietary — you are trusting the vendor with your data and uptime.

Where each tool shines: Datadog's biggest strengths are: most comprehensive monitoring platform available. 750+ integrations covering virtually every technology. Sentry's biggest strengths are: best-in-class error tracking with detailed stack traces. session replay shows exactly what users experienced.

Watch out for: With Datadog, users commonly note that pricing is complex and gets very expensive at scale. With Sentry, the main complaint is that event-based pricing can get expensive with noisy apps.

Choose Datadog if...

You need a tool built for engineering teams running complex, multi-service infrastructure at scale
You want to save on per-user costs — Datadog is $11.00/user/mo cheaper
You specifically need APM and Alerting
You care about 750+ integrations covering virtually every technology
Your team size fits the enterprise profile Datadog is designed for

Choose Sentry if...

You need a tool built for development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly
You need self-hosting, data sovereignty, or the ability to audit source code
You specifically need Alerts and Error Tracking
You care about session replay shows exactly what users experienced
Your team size fits the any size profile Sentry is designed for