head to head · open source
Sentry vs Icinga
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars, 4,959 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Icinga has 2,245 stars, 623 forks, 496 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 1,936% (45,704 vs 2,245 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; Icinga is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Icinga 28%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | Icinga | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 623 |
| 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 Icinga if
- You want the Icinga feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Icinga 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 Icinga
Icinga 2 Table of Contents 1. [About][About] 2. [Installation][Installation] 3. [Documentation][Documentation] 4. [Support][Support] 5. [License][License] 6. [Contributing][Contributing] About Icinga is a monitoring system which checks the availability of your network resources, notifies users of outages, and generates performance data for reporting. Scalable and extensible, Icinga can monitor large, complex environments across multiple locations. Icinga 2 is the monitoring server and requires Icinga Web 2 on top in your Icinga Stack. The configuration can be easily managed with either the Icinga Director…
read the full Icinga overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or Icinga more popular?
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars and Icinga has 2,245. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and Icinga free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and Icinga is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and Icinga?
Sentry is written in Python and Icinga in C++. 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 Icinga?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (45,704 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Icinga if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.