head to head · open source
Sentry vs pinpoint
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars, 4,857 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped today. pinpoint has 13,872 stars, 3,749 forks, 543 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sentry leads on adoption by 223% (44,806 vs 13,872 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; pinpoint is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, pinpoint 27%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (apm, monitoring), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Sentry | pinpoint | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 14K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 3.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Sentry if
- You weight community size — 45K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick pinpoint if
- You want the pinpoint feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and pinpoint fits your workflow better
About Sentry
Sentry is an open source debugging platform for detecting, tracing, and fixing software issues in real time. It lives in the developer infrastructure ecosystem and provides error tracking and performance monitoring across languages, frameworks, and runtime environments.
read the full Sentry overview →
About pinpoint
Pinpoint is an open source Application Performance Management (APM) tool built for large scale distributed systems. It is written primarily in Java and also supports applications written in PHP and Python through a separate agent repository. Inspired by Google's Dapper, it provides a way to analyze the overall structure of a system and how the components inside it are interconnected by tracing transactions across distributed applications. The project lives in the Java ecosystem, is licensed under Apache 2.0, and has been developed for around twelve years, with its current stable release being v3.1.0.…
read the full pinpoint overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or pinpoint more popular?
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars and pinpoint has 13,872. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and pinpoint free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and pinpoint is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and pinpoint?
Sentry is written in Python and pinpoint in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Sentry or pinpoint?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,806 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose pinpoint if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.