head to head · open source
Sentry vs tracing
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars, 4,857 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped today. tracing has 6,880 stars, 933 forks, 887 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 551% (44,806 vs 6,880 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; tracing is written in Rust under MIT. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, tracing 14%. 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 | tracing | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 6.9K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-05-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 933 |
| 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 tracing if
- You want the tracing feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and tracing 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 tracing
tracing is a Rust framework for instrumenting programs to collect structured, event based diagnostic information, and it is aimed at Rust developers and library authors who need observability beyond plain text log lines.
read the full tracing overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or tracing more popular?
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars and tracing has 6,880. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and tracing free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and tracing is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and tracing?
Sentry is written in Python and tracing in Rust. 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 tracing?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,806 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose tracing if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.