head to head · open source
Sentry vs cortex
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars, 4,959 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cortex has 5,875 stars, 883 forks, 343 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 678% (45,704 vs 5,875 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; cortex is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, cortex 15%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | cortex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 883 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Sentry if
- You weight community size — 46K 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 cortex if
- You want the cortex feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cortex fits your workflow better
About Sentry
Users and logs provide clues. Sentry provides answers. What's Sentry? Sentry is the debugging platform that helps every developer detect, trace, and fix issues. Code breaks, fix it faster. Official Sentry SDKs JavaScript Electron React Native Python Ruby PHP Laravel Go Rust Java/Kotlin Objective C/Swift C\ /F\ C/C++ Dart/Flutter Perl Clojure Elixir Unity Unreal Engine Godot Engine PowerShell Resources Documentation Discussions (Bugs, feature requests, general questions) Discord Contributing Bug Tracker Code Transifex (Translate Sentry\!)
read the full Sentry overview →
About cortex
Cortex Cortex is a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi tenant, long term storage solution for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry Metrics. Features Horizontally scalable: Cortex can run across multiple machines in a cluster, exceeding the throughput and storage of a single machine. Highly available: When run in a cluster, Cortex can replicate data between machines. Multi tenant: Cortex can isolate data and queries from multiple different independent Prometheus sources in a single cluster. Long term storage: Cortex supports S3, GCS, Swift and Microsoft Azure for long term storage of metric data. Documentation…
read the full cortex overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or cortex more popular?
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars and cortex has 5,875. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and cortex free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and cortex is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and cortex?
Sentry is written in Python and cortex in Go. 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 cortex?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (45,704 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose cortex if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.