What is the difference between Sentry and Grafana?

Sentry is best for Development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly, while Grafana is best for Teams wanting open-source dashboards and visualization. Sentry starts at $26/mo and Grafana starts at Free.

Is Sentry or Grafana cheaper?

Sentry starts at $26/mo with a free tier. Grafana starts at Free and is free.

Is there a free alternative to Grafana?

Both Sentry and Grafana offer free tiers.

Sentry vs Grafana

Sentry is application monitoring platform focused on error tracking, performance monitoring, and session replay, while Grafana is open-source observability platform for metrics visualization, dashboards, and alerting from any data source. The biggest difference up front: Grafana is free, while Sentry starts at $26/mo. Sentry is built for development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly, whereas Grafana targets teams wanting open-source dashboards and visualization.

At a glance

	Sentry	Grafana
Best for	Development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly	Teams wanting open-source dashboards and visualization
Starting price	$26/mo	Free
Free tier	✓	✓
Open source	✓	✓
Free tier available	✓	✓
Open source	✓	✓
Alerting	—	✓
Alerts	✓	—
Dashboards	—	✓
Data Sources	—	✓
Error Tracking	✓	—
Open Source	—	✓
Performance Monitoring	✓	—
Release Tracking	✓	—
Session Replay	✓	—

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

Grafana

Strengths

Open source and transparent
Customizable dashboards give real-time visibility into project progress
Fully open-source — you can self-host, audit the code, and avoid vendor lock-in
The core product is free with no paywalled essentials

Weaknesses

May lack some advanced features
Self-hosting is free but requires server maintenance and DevOps knowledge
Fewer built-in features means you may need additional tools to cover gaps
Ecosystem of third-party integrations is smaller than the market leaders in monitoring

Try Grafana → Full review

The bottom line

Pricing: Grafana is completely free, which makes it the obvious pick if budget is the top concern. Sentry starts at $26/mo, but Free for 5K errors and 10K performance events/mo. That cost buys you a more polished or feature-rich experience, so it comes down to whether the extras justify the spend.

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

Team fit: Both tools target any size teams, so the decision hinges on features and workflow fit rather than scale.

Open source: Both Sentry and Grafana are open source, so self-hosting and code audits are on the table with either choice.

Where each tool shines: Sentry's biggest strengths are: best-in-class error tracking with detailed stack traces. session replay shows exactly what users experienced. Grafana's biggest strengths are: open source and transparent. customizable dashboards give real-time visibility into project progress.

Watch out for: With Sentry, users commonly note that event-based pricing can get expensive with noisy apps. With Grafana, the main complaint is that may lack some advanced features.

Choose Sentry if...

You need a tool built for development teams that need to catch, triage, and fix errors quickly
You specifically need Alerts and Error Tracking
You care about session replay shows exactly what users experienced
The free tier works for you: free for 5k errors and 10k performance events/mo

Choose Grafana if...

Your profile matches its sweet spot: teams wanting open-source dashboards and visualization
Budget is a hard constraint — Grafana is free, Sentry is not
You specifically need Alerting and Dashboards
You care about customizable dashboards give real-time visibility into project progress