Sentry alternatives in 2026: GlitchTip, Bugsink, Telebugs, Epure, and hosted options

Most “Sentry alternative” lists mash exception trackers with full observability suites. That hides the real fork. Sentry Cloud is errors plus replay, traces, and profiles, metered. Lite tools keep exceptions, and some of them still speak the Sentry envelope so you paste a new DSN into @sentry/nextjs or sentry-python.

Figures below come from public docs as of 2026-09. Epure idle RAM is ~82 MiB, measured 2026-09-12 on Docker Desktop. Re-check vendor pages before you buy. Head-to-heads with more stack detail: Epure vs Sentry, vs GlitchTip, vs Bugsink, vs Telebugs.

What you give up when you leave Sentry

You lose session replay, distributed tracing, continuous profiling, and Sentry’s Seer-class surfaces. Lite hosts keep issues, breadcrumbs, and (on Epure) JS/TS sourcemaps. If those dropped products are daily work, stay on Sentry Cloud. Do not try to squeeze that suite onto a $4 VPS.

How to score the roster

Use four axes. SDK path: official Sentry clients via DSN, or a rewrite. Self-host footprint: Sentry’s documented stack is 20+ containers and 16-32 GB; lite options run from one SQLite process to four Django services to two containers (app + Postgres). License: MIT and Apache 2.0 are OSI; Polyform Shield and pay-once binaries are source-available or commercial; FSL is Sentry’s self-host license. Invoice: Team PAYG, a flat SaaS bill, $299 once, or $0 plus hardware.

The tools, one job each

Sentry: stay if replay and APM are the product

Native SDK, native ingest. Team is about $26 for 50k errors, then meters. Official self-host is 20+ containers on a 16-32 GB class machine under FSL. Skip it if you wanted a small compose or a flat error invoice.

GlitchTip: MIT and the longest lite Sentry-wire clock

DSN swap, MIT, about four containers (web, worker, Redis/Valkey, Postgres). Install docs list 256 MB minimum and 512 MB recommended. Hosted plans exist on glitchtip.com. Skip it if you refuse Redis and Celery. Epure vs GlitchTip is the stack split.

Bugsink: one SQLite container

DSN swap, one Django container, SQLite default, Postgres optional. Polyform Shield: source-available, self-host if you are not competing with it. Hosted EU plans on their site. Skip it if counsel requires an OSI license. Epure vs Bugsink.

Telebugs: $299 once, installer, vendor email

DSN swap, one Rails + SQLite container, 1 GB documented minimum, $299 once per domain. Skip it if you want OSI, public GitHub, or Postgres as the default store. Epure vs Telebugs.

Honeybadger: flat hosted bill, own SDK

Closed-source SaaS around $26/mo, uptime in the bundle. Notices go to their API with an API key. Changing SENTRY_DSN to a Honeybadger URL will not land issues. No self-host.

PostHog Errors: 100k hosted exceptions next to analytics

Own product, own SDK, 100k exceptions free on the errors product. Self-host is the full PostHog stack, not a two-box error tracker. Use it if you already live in PostHog. It is not a lite Sentry replica.

Epure: Apache 2.0, two containers, DSN swap

Envelope plus legacy store. Two containers: Rust binary and PostgreSQL 16. No Redis, no Kafka. Idle stack ~82 MiB on 2026-09-12 (Docker Desktop). Self-host $0. Cloud Pro $24 / Plus $79 coming, not live. JS/TS sourcemaps only. Transactions discarded. No replay ingest. Skip it if replay is daily work, or MIT is a hard counsel rule. Clone: GitHub. Install: self-host.

Scoreboard

Each column wins a different row. Sentry keeps replay. GlitchTip keeps MIT years. Bugsink keeps one SQLite box. Telebugs keeps $299 support. Honeybadger keeps a flat hosted bill. PostHog keeps 100k free plus analytics. Epure keeps Apache 2.0, Postgres, and two containers.

Pick by the job

Highlight.io

Highlight.io ended hosted service in February 2026. Treat it as historical. The rows above are products you can buy or clone today.

Related guides: self-host under 512 MB, Sentry SDK compatible, best free error tracking. Clone Epure on GitHub.