Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Papertrail

610
379
+ 1
273
Sentry

14.6K
9.1K
+ 1
863
Add tool

Papertrail vs Sentry: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will outline the key differences between Papertrail and Sentry, two popular logging and error tracking platforms.

  1. Scalability: Papertrail is a cloud-based log management solution that offers automatic log aggregation and scalability. It can handle large volumes of logs and scales well with the growth of an application. On the other hand, Sentry is primarily an error tracking platform that focuses on capturing and triaging errors. While it provides real-time error tracking, it may not offer the same scalability as Papertrail for managing logs at a large scale.

  2. Search and Filtering Capabilities: Papertrail provides powerful search and filtering capabilities for logs. It allows users to search and filter logs based on timestamp, source, program, host, or custom attributes. Additionally, it supports regular expression searches for advanced log filtering. Whereas Sentry, being an error tracking platform, focuses more on error aggregation and analysis rather than extensive log search and filtering capabilities.

  3. Real-time Log Streaming: Papertrail offers real-time log streaming, allowing users to see logs as they are generated. This feature is particularly useful for monitoring live applications and troubleshooting issues in real-time. On the other hand, Sentry provides real-time error tracking and notifications but may not offer real-time log streaming as extensively as Papertrail.

  4. Integration Possibilities: Papertrail provides integration options with a variety of systems and platforms, including popular cloud platforms like AWS, Heroku, and Google Cloud. It also supports integrations with popular logging libraries and frameworks. In comparison, Sentry offers extensive integration possibilities with various programming languages, frameworks, and platforms, making it a versatile choice for capturing and tracking errors across different applications.

  5. Alerting and Notifications: Both Papertrail and Sentry offer alerting and notification features. However, Papertrail provides more flexibility in setting up custom alerts based on specific log events and patterns. Users can configure notifications via email, chat services, or webhooks. Sentry also provides alerting and notification capabilities but may not offer the same level of customization as Papertrail.

  6. Anomaly Detection and Performance Monitoring: While Sentry primarily focuses on capturing and tracking errors, Papertrail provides features for anomaly detection and performance monitoring. Papertrail's log analysis tools can help identify abnormal patterns or anomalies in logs, facilitating proactive troubleshooting and performance optimization.

In summary, Papertrail offers scalability, powerful log search capabilities, real-time log streaming, a wide range of integrations, flexible alerting/notification options, and anomaly detection/performance monitoring features. Sentry, on the other hand, focuses on error tracking, providing real-time error notifications, extensive integrations, and prioritization of error resolution.

Decisions about Papertrail and Sentry

I essentially inherited a Shopify theme that was originally created by an agency. After discovering a number of errors being thrown in the Dev Console just by scrolling through the website, I needed more visibility over any errors happening in the field. Having used both Sentry and TrackJS, I always got lost in the TrackJS interface, so I felt more comfortable introducing Sentry. The Sentry free tier is also very generous, although it turns out the theme threw over 15k errors in less than a week.

I highly recommend setting up error tracking from day one. Theoretically, you should never need to upgrade from the free tier if you're keeping on top of the errors...

See more
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of Papertrail
Pros of Sentry
  • 85
    Log search
  • 43
    Easy log aggregation across multiple machines
  • 43
    Integrates with Heroku
  • 37
    Simple interface
  • 26
    Backup to S3
  • 19
    Easy setup, independent of existing logging setup
  • 15
    Heroku add-on
  • 3
    Command line interface
  • 1
    Alerting
  • 1
    Good for Startups
  • 237
    Consolidates similar errors and makes resolution easy
  • 121
    Email Notifications
  • 108
    Open source
  • 84
    Slack integration
  • 71
    Github integration
  • 49
    Easy
  • 44
    User-friendly interface
  • 28
    The most important tool we use in production
  • 18
    Hipchat integration
  • 17
    Heroku Integration
  • 15
    Good documentation
  • 14
    Free tier
  • 11
    Self-hosted
  • 9
    Easy setup
  • 7
    Realiable
  • 6
    Provides context, and great stack trace
  • 4
    Feedback form on error pages
  • 4
    Love it baby
  • 3
    Gitlab integration
  • 3
    Filter by custom tags
  • 3
    Super user friendly
  • 3
    Captures local variables at each frame in backtraces
  • 3
    Easy Integration
  • 1
    Performance measurements

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Papertrail
Cons of Sentry
  • 2
    Expensive
  • 1
    External Network Goes Down You Wont Be Logging
  • 12
    Confusing UI
  • 4
    Bundle size

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Papertrail?

Papertrail helps detect, resolve, and avoid infrastructure problems using log messages. Papertrail's practicality comes from our own experience as sysadmins, developers, and entrepreneurs.

What is Sentry?

Sentry’s Application Monitoring platform helps developers see performance issues, fix errors faster, and optimize their code health.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use Papertrail?
What companies use Sentry?
See which teams inside your own company are using Papertrail or Sentry.
Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

What tools integrate with Papertrail?
What tools integrate with Sentry?

Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

Blog Posts

Oct 11 2019 at 2:36PM

LogRocket

JavaScriptReactAngularJS+8
5
1955
JavaScriptGitHubNode.js+29
14
13398
GitHubPythonReact+42
49
40691
GitHubGitPython+22
17
14199
What are some alternatives to Papertrail and Sentry?
Splunk
It provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence. Customers use it to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data.
Logstash
Logstash is a tool for managing events and logs. You can use it to collect logs, parse them, and store them for later use (like, for searching). If you store them in Elasticsearch, you can view and analyze them with Kibana.
Loggly
It is a SaaS solution to manage your log data. There is nothing to install and updates are automatically applied to your Loggly subdomain.
Logentries
Logentries makes machine-generated log data easily accessible to IT operations, development, and business analysis teams of all sizes. With the broadest platform support and an open API, Logentries brings the value of log-level data to any system, to any team member, and to a community of more than 25,000 worldwide users.
Datadog
Datadog is the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring. It is used by IT, operations, and development teams who build and operate applications that run on dynamic or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Start monitoring in minutes with Datadog!
See all alternatives