head to head · open source
Sentry vs OpenObserve
Sentry has 44,792 GitHub stars, 4,854 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenObserve has 21,993 stars, 1,091 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sentry leads on adoption by 104% (44,792 vs 21,993 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (apm), 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 | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 22K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve 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 OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring, session replay, pipelines, SLO, and LLM observability. It lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem and is described as an alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. The project is built in Rust, ships as a single binary, and uses Parquet columnar storage with an S3 native design.
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or OpenObserve more popular?
Sentry has 44,792 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 21,993. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and OpenObserve is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and OpenObserve?
Sentry is written in Python and OpenObserve in TypeScript. 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 OpenObserve?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,792 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.