head to head · open source
Sentry vs NLog
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars, 4,857 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped today. NLog has 6,545 stars, 1,377 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sentry leads on adoption by 585% (44,806 vs 6,545 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.
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Side by side
| Sentry | NLog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Custom / other | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 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
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 NLog
NLog is a free logging platform for .NET, distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license and maintained in the NLog/NLog repository on GitHub. It provides rich log routing and management capabilities, so an application can produce and manage high quality logs regardless of its size or complexity. It lives in the .NET ecosystem, is written in C , and targets cross platform use across .NET Framework, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, MAUI, and Mono. The project has been developed for fourteen years and is published as the NLog package on NuGet, with the current 6.0 line adding AOT support.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or NLog more popular?
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars and NLog has 6,545. 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 (44,806 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.