head to head · open source
Sentry vs NLog
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars, 4,959 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NLog has 6,546 stars, 1,378 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 598% (45,704 vs 6,546 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; NLog is written in C# under BSD-3-Clause. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, NLog 21%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Sentry | NLog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Custom / other | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 NLog if
- You want the NLog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and NLog 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 NLog
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET with rich log routing and management capabilities. It makes it easy to produce and manage high quality logs for your application regardless of its size or complexity. Handles both structured logging and traditional logging from any .NET language, augment with contextual information, format according to your preference and send them to one or more targets such as file or console. Major and minor releases will be posted on project news. Getting started .NET Framework ASP.NET Core .NET Core Console For the possible options in the config, check the Options list and API…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Monitoring & Observability projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Monitoring & Observability field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or NLog more popular?
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars and NLog has 6,546. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and NLog free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and NLog is licensed under BSD-3-Clause. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and NLog?
Sentry is written in Python and NLog 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 NLog?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (45,704 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose NLog if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.