head to head · open source
Sentry vs thanos
Sentry has 44,798 GitHub stars, 4,854 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped today. thanos has 14,207 stars, 2,369 forks, 908 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sentry leads on adoption by 215% (44,798 vs 14,207 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; thanos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, thanos 17%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 14K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 thanos if
- You want the thanos feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and thanos 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 thanos
Thanos is a CNCF Incubating, Apache 2.0 licensed collection of Go components that composes a highly available metric system with unlimited storage capacity on top of an existing Prometheus deployment.
read the full thanos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or thanos more popular?
Sentry has 44,798 GitHub stars and thanos has 14,207. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and thanos free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and thanos is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and thanos?
Sentry is written in Python and thanos in Go. 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 thanos?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,798 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose thanos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.