About 17; min
Error tracking is one of those tools you don’t appreciate until your app breaks in production at 2 AM. Sentry and Datadog APM both catch errors and performance issues, but they approach the problem from opposite directions. Sentry started as a developer-focused error tracker and expanded into performance monitoring. Datadog started as infrastructure monitoring and added application performance management on top.
The choice between them often comes down to team size, existing stack, and whether you need deep error context or full-stack observability. Here’s how their pricing and features compare in 2026.
Quick Pricing Overview
| Plan | Sentry | Datadog APM |
|---|---|---|
| Free / Developer | Free (5K errors/mo) | Free (5 hosts, limited) |
| Team | $26/mo (50K errors) | $31/host/mo (APM) |
| Business | $80/mo (100K errors) | $31/host/mo + $0.10/span (indexed) |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Sentry Pricing Breakdown
Sentry’s Developer plan is free for individual developers — 5,000 errors per month, 1 user, and 30-day data retention. The Team plan at $26 per month includes 50,000 errors, unlimited users, performance monitoring with 100K transactions, and 90-day retention. The Business plan at $80 per month covers 100K errors, 100K transactions, cross-project issue search, custom dashboards, and advanced data management. Additional errors cost $0.000290 each on the Team plan. All plans include stack traces, breadcrumbs, source map support, and integrations with GitHub, Jira, Slack, and PagerDuty. Sentry also offers session replay on Team plans and above — a recording of user interactions leading up to an error.
Datadog APM Pricing Breakdown
Datadog APM is priced per host at $31 per host per month (billed annually) or $36 monthly. Each host includes 1 million trace spans indexed per month. Additional indexed spans cost $1.70 per million. This is just the APM module — Datadog’s infrastructure monitoring ($15/host/mo) and log management ($0.10/GB ingested) are separate products that most teams add alongside APM. Error tracking is included in APM but can also be purchased standalone at $15/host/mo. The free tier gives you 5 hosts with basic APM features for 14 days. Real User Monitoring (RUM) adds $1.50 per 1,000 sessions. The total Datadog bill depends heavily on how many products you use and your data volume.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Sentry | Datadog APM |
|---|---|---|
| Error Tracking | Core product (deep context) | Included in APM |
| Performance Monitoring | Transaction tracing (Team+) | Distributed tracing (core feature) |
| Session Replay | Built-in (Team+) | Separate RUM product ($1.50/1K sessions) |
| Stack Traces | Full with source maps | Full with source maps |
| Infrastructure Monitoring | Not available | Core product ($15/host/mo) |
| Log Management | Not available | Separate product ($0.10/GB) |
| Alerting | Issue-based alerts | Metric, trace, and log-based alerts |
| Dashboards | Business plan and above | All plans (highly customizable) |
| Language Support | 40+ SDKs | 15+ languages with auto-instrumentation |
| Release Tracking | Built-in with deploy markers | Available via tags |
| Issue Grouping | Fingerprinting + ML grouping | Pattern-based grouping |
| GitHub Integration | Native (suspect commits, PR comments) | Basic (source code integration) |
Cost Scenarios
Startup with 2 servers, 3 developers
Sentry Team at $26 per month covers 50K errors with unlimited users — one flat price regardless of infrastructure size. Datadog APM at $31 per host per month costs $62 per month for 2 hosts, and most teams add infrastructure monitoring ($30/mo) for a total of $92 per month. Sentry: $26/mo. Datadog: ~$92/mo.
Growing SaaS with 15 servers
Sentry Business at $80 per month stays flat — errors are volume-based, not host-based. Datadog APM at $31 per host per month runs $465 per month for APM alone. Adding infrastructure monitoring ($225/mo) and basic log management pushes the total past $700 per month. Sentry: $80/mo. Datadog: $700+/mo.
Enterprise with 100+ servers, full observability needed
This is where Datadog’s model makes more sense. A team at this scale needs infrastructure monitoring, APM, logs, and RUM in a unified platform. Sentry would handle errors and performance well at custom pricing, but you’d still need separate tools for infrastructure and log management. Datadog consolidates everything into one vendor, which reduces operational overhead even if the sticker price is higher. Sentry: custom + other tools. Datadog: custom (unified platform).
Developer Workflow
Sentry integrates deeply into the development process. When an error occurs, Sentry shows the exact commit that likely caused it (suspect commits), links to the pull request, and can automatically assign the issue to the developer who wrote that code. Release health tracking shows whether a new deploy increased or decreased error rates. The session replay feature records what the user was doing before the crash, removing the guesswork from reproduction.
Datadog takes a broader observability approach. When an error occurs, you can follow the trace across services, check the infrastructure metrics for the host at that moment, search related logs, and see RUM data from the user’s browser — all in one platform. The correlated view across traces, metrics, and logs is powerful for debugging distributed systems where the root cause might be in a different service than where the error surfaced.
Who Should Pick What
Pick Sentry if:
- Error tracking is your primary need and you want the deepest error context available
- You’re a small or mid-size team that wants predictable, volume-based pricing
- Developer workflow integration (suspect commits, PR comments, session replay) matters
- You already have infrastructure monitoring covered by another tool
Pick Datadog APM if:
- You need full-stack observability — infrastructure, APM, logs, and RUM in one place
- Your architecture is distributed microservices where cross-service tracing is essential
- You’re already paying for Datadog infrastructure monitoring and want to add APM
- Unified alerting across all telemetry types (metrics, traces, logs) is a priority
Sentry wins for teams that need focused, affordable error tracking with deep developer integration. Its pricing is dramatically lower — a growing SaaS pays $80 per month for Sentry versus $700+ for equivalent Datadog coverage. Datadog APM wins when you need a unified observability platform that correlates errors with infrastructure metrics and logs across distributed systems. For most development teams, Sentry solves the error tracking problem better and cheaper. For platform engineering teams managing complex microservice architectures, Datadog’s all-in-one approach reduces tool sprawl and speeds up incident response.
FAQ
Can I use Sentry and Datadog together?
Yes. Many teams use Sentry for error tracking and Datadog for infrastructure monitoring and logs. The two tools integrate via webhooks and the Sentry-Datadog marketplace integration, so errors can appear in Datadog dashboards.
Does Sentry do infrastructure monitoring?
No. Sentry focuses on application-level error tracking and performance monitoring. For server metrics, uptime, and infrastructure health, you need a separate tool.
Is Datadog APM worth it without other Datadog products?
Datadog APM works standalone, but its biggest strength is the correlation between traces, metrics, and logs. Using APM alone means paying a premium without getting the full benefit of the unified platform. If you only need APM, Sentry or similar tools offer better value.
How does Sentry’s session replay compare to Datadog RUM?
Sentry session replay is included in Team plans and records user sessions tied to errors. Datadog RUM is a separate paid product ($1.50/1K sessions) that provides broader user experience monitoring beyond just error-related sessions. For error debugging, Sentry’s replay is more tightly integrated. For general user experience analytics, Datadog RUM is more capable.
