head to head · open source
Sentry vs clockwork
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars, 4,857 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped today. clockwork has 5,954 stars, 333 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 653% (44,806 vs 5,954 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; clockwork is written in PHP under MIT. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, clockwork 6%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | clockwork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-08-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 333 |
| 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 clockwork if
- You want the clockwork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and clockwork 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 clockwork
Clockwork is a development tool for PHP that gives developers an insight into their application runtime — including request data, performance metrics, log entries, database queries, cache queries, redis commands, dispatched events, queued jobs and rendered views — right in the browser, and this repository contains its server side component.
read the full clockwork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or clockwork more popular?
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars and clockwork has 5,954. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and clockwork free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and clockwork is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and clockwork?
Sentry is written in Python and clockwork in PHP. 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 clockwork?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,806 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose clockwork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.