head to head · open source
Sentry vs hl
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars, 4,959 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hl has 3,322 stars, 68 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 1,276% (45,704 vs 3,322 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; hl is written in Rust under MIT. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, hl 2%. 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 | hl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 68 |
| 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 hl if
- You want the hl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hl 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 hl
hl [![Build Status][ci img]][ci] [![Coverage Status][cov img]][cov] [![Release][release img]][release] High performance log viewer and processor that transforms logs in JSON and logfmt formats into a human readable output. Built with efficiency in mind, it enables quick parsing and analysis of large log files with minimal overhead. Features overview Automatic Pager Integration : Automatically integrates with a pager for enhanced convenience, defaulting to less if available, but fully supporting any compatible pager. Log Streaming Mode : Enable log streaming with the P flag, which disables the pager. Field Based…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or hl more popular?
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars and hl has 3,322. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and hl free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and hl is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and hl?
Sentry is written in Python and hl in Rust. 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 hl?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (45,704 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose hl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.