head to head · open source
Sentry vs Zabbix
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars, 4,857 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped today. Zabbix has 6,386 stars, 1,260 forks, 108 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 602% (44,806 vs 6,386 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; Zabbix is written in Go Template under AGPL-3.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Zabbix 20%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | Zabbix | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 6.4K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go Template |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 Zabbix if
- You want the Zabbix feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go Template
- You evaluated both and Zabbix 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 Zabbix
Zabbix is an enterprise class, open source distributed monitoring solution that measures the performance and availability of network devices, servers, services, and other IT resources. The project lives in the open source infrastructure monitoring and observability ecosystem, and its source is distributed under the AGPL 3.0 only license, with the repository carrying 6,374 stars and 1,255 forks. It is written using Go Template and is hosted by the Zabbix project at zabbix.com, where the download and documentation entry points are published. The stated scope runs from a simple standalone application through to a la…
read the full Zabbix overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or Zabbix more popular?
Sentry has 44,806 GitHub stars and Zabbix has 6,386. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and Zabbix free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and Zabbix is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and Zabbix?
Sentry is written in Python and Zabbix in Go Template. 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 Zabbix?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,806 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Zabbix if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.