Cheapest error tracking: Sentry bill, $0 license, or a flat list price
cheapest error tracking
Three invoices. A metered Sentry team plan, a $0 license on a VPS you operate, or published Cloud list prices (Cloud not live).
On this pageShowHide
"Cheap" splits into three bills. Someone else meters every error. You clone a $0 license and pay the machine. Or you look at a published flat hosted price for a capped event count. Pick the bill you can predict.
Public prices restated 2026-10-05. Sentry Team about $26/mo annual default with 50k errors included then PAYG (sentry.io/pricing, fetched 2026-10-05). Bugsink hosted from about $16 for 75k (bugsink.com, fetched 2026-10-05). Epure self-host $0 Apache 2.0. Epure Cloud list prices Pro $24 / Plus $79 are published and Cloud is not live as of 2026-10-05. Worked Sentry scenarios: Sentry cost calculator. Free quotas: Best free error tracking.
Three bills
Sentry Team is about $26 for 50k errors, then pay-as-you-go. Tracing left on is a larger bill than errors alone. The calculator on this site puts one tracing-on case near $171 and a crash-loop case near $713. Those are scenarios, not your invoice.
A $0 license is GlitchTip (MIT), Bugsink (Polyform Shield), or Epure (Apache 2.0). The software fee is $0. The VPS, disk, TLS, and backups are yours. Sentry self-host is a 16 GB class machine even before you debate COMPOSE_PROFILES=errors-only, so the cheap box is not that install. Disclose the official errors-only profile, then notice it is still a large fleet next to two containers.
Epure Cloud list prices are Pro $24 for 200k events and Plus $79, described as flat with zero overages on those plans. Treat them as published list prices only. Cloud is not checkout-ready today. Do not plan a purchase path that assumes Cloud is live.
Telebugs is $299 once per domain, then your VPS. Leave it off a monthly SaaS comparison. GlitchTip Cloud and Bugsink hosted are paid after small free samples.
Scoreboard
Sentry Team
- Software
- About $26 / 50k errors
- You also pay
- PAYG after included
- A crash loop
- Metered; see calculator
GlitchTip self-host
- Software
- $0, MIT
- You also pay
- VPS and about four services
- A crash loop
- Your CPU and disk
Bugsink self-host
- Software
- $0, Shield
- You also pay
- VPS, one container
- A crash loop
- Your CPU and disk
Epure self-host
- Software
- $0, Apache 2.0
- You also pay
- VPS, two containers, Postgres
- A crash loop
- Spike valve may drop bodies; counter still moves
Epure Cloud list
- Software
- $24 / 200k (Pro)
- You also pay
- N/A inside plan story
- A crash loop
- Flat on paper; Cloud not live
| Dimension | Software | You also pay | A crash loop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentry Team | About $26 / 50k errors | PAYG after included | Metered; see calculator |
| GlitchTip self-host | $0, MIT | VPS and about four services | Your CPU and disk |
| Bugsink self-host | $0, Shield | VPS, one container | Your CPU and disk |
| Epure self-host | $0, Apache 2.0 | VPS, two containers, Postgres | Spike valve may drop bodies; counter still moves |
| Epure Cloud list | $24 / 200k (Pro) | N/A inside plan story | Flat on paper; Cloud not live |
Why the spike changes the winner
A tight loop on Sentry's meter is how a $26 plan becomes the crash-loop figure on the calculator. On Epure self-host the same fingerprint can still return HTTP 202, increment the issue counter, and drop excess bodies under the spike valve (about 100 raw events per minute per fingerprint on the documented default). The hourly project cap returns 403. You pay electricity and disk, not a per-event overage. That is the VPS story. It is not a promise that the box is free. Spike valve.
Lived invoice
Our Team plan looked fine at quiet traffic. A bad deploy retried a payment webhook. Errors climbed while tracing was still sampled above zero. The projected bill moved in the same hour we were reading the stack. We set tracesSampleRate to 0, turned replay rates to 0, and dual-sent exceptions to an Epure DSN on a small VPS for a week. The Sentry meter calmed. The Epure Issues list kept the count without a second invoice line. We cut the dual-send when we trusted the box. The lesson was not "Sentry is bad." The lesson was "the cheapest headline is not the cheapest spike."
Gotcha one: leaving performance integrations enabled "just in case" taxes the meter while you debug an exception. Gotcha two: comparing Epure Cloud list prices as if checkout existed today. Self-host is the purchasable $0 software path right now.
Pick the bill
Pick Epure self-host if you will run the VPS and want a $0 Apache license. Pick GlitchTip for MIT on a box you operate. Pick Bugsink for one container when Shield is fine. Pick Sentry Team if you want the suite and will pay the meter with eyes open. Watch Cloud list prices if you want a flat hosted story later; do not buy what is not live. Install shortlist: Best self-hosted.
VPS math without invented list prices
Do not paste a fake $5 VPS claim as if it were a receipt. The cheap story is relative: a box that can hold two containers and Postgres 16 is a different purchase from a 16 GB Sentry host. Link Self-hosted under 512 MB and Resource footprint for dated idle numbers. Your provider's SKU list is the money line.
If you already pay for a VPS that runs the app, the marginal software cost of Epure is $0 under Apache 2.0 plus a Postgres volume and a bit of RAM. If you do not want to operate that volume, you are shopping hosted plans, and you must separate live checkout from list prices. Epure Cloud is list-only today.
Who should ignore "cheapest"
Ignore this page if session replay closes your tickets, if traces are how your team pages, or if mobile crash symbolication is the product. Those jobs buy suites. Cheap errors-only hosts will feel incomplete on purpose. Read When error tracking is enough before you optimize the invoice alone.
Bias
First-party page. Epure wins the $0 Apache + two-container cell. GlitchTip and Bugsink remain correct picks for MIT and one-container Shield. Re-fetch Sentry and Bugsink pricing on decision day.