head to head · open source
Sentry vs tracing
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars, 4,959 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tracing has 6,954 stars, 960 forks, 887 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 557% (45,704 vs 6,954 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 | ★ 46K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 960 |
| 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 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
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 tracing
![Tracing — Structured, application level diagnostics][splash] [splash]: [![Crates.io][crates badge]][crates url] [![Documentation][docs badge]][docs url] [![Documentation (v0.2.x)][docs v0.2.x badge]][docs v0.2.x url] [![MIT licensed][mit badge]][mit url] [![Build Status][actions badge]][actions url] [![Discord chat][discord badge]][discord url] [crates badge]: [crates url]: [docs badge]: [docs url]: [docs v0.2.x badge]: [docs v0.2.x url]: [mit badge]: [mit url]: LICENSE [actions badge]: [actions url]: [discord badge]: [discord url]: Website Chat Overview tracing is a framework for instrumenting Rust programs…
read the full tracing overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or tracing more popular?
Sentry has 45,704 GitHub stars and tracing has 6,954. 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 (45,704 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose tracing if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.