Is Sentry free? What it actually costs in 2026

What the free tier actually includes

• —1 user
• —5,000 errors per month
• —5 million tracing spans
• —50 session replays
• —5 GB of logs and 1 GB of attachments
• —30-day lookback

Where the wall is

The second person. The free plan is single-user, so the moment a colleague needs to see an error you are on Team — and on a busy app the 5,000-error allowance goes quickly too.

After that: Team at $26 a month billed annually, adding unlimited users, API and third-party integrations, 20 custom dashboards and additional event volume.

Can you self-host Sentry? Yes

Self-hosted Sentry is Fair Source under the Functional Source License, which becomes Apache 2.0 after two years; you may run it but not sell it as a service. It needs at least 4 CPU cores, 16 GB of RAM plus 16 GB of swap (32 GB recommended) and 20 GB of disk.

What it actually takes to run one yourself

Real RAM against the documented minimum, monthly cost, setup time, and the one thing that catches people out.

What you are locked into

SDKs use the open Sentry protocol (DSN-based ingestion), which is itself a strength for switching — most alternatives below are wire-compatible and only require changing the DSN, not application code. The lock-in is mainly economic (event-based billing that scales with traffic) and licensing (FSL, not OSI), not data-format.

If you would rather not pay: GlitchTip