head to head · open source
Sentry vs witr
Sentry has 44,792 GitHub stars, 4,854 forks, 2,265 open issues and last shipped yesterday. witr has 22,374 stars, 781 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Sentry leads on adoption by 100% (44,792 vs 22,374 stars). Sentry is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; witr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Sentry has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, witr 3%. Sentry was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, 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 | witr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 22K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 781 |
| 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 witr if
- You want the witr 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 witr 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 witr
witr is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed Go tool with both a command line interface and an interactive terminal UI that traces any process, port, container, or file back to the exact chain of systems that started it, and it is built for operators, SREs, and developers who need to answer "why is this running?" during debugging and incident response.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sentry or witr more popular?
Sentry has 44,792 GitHub stars and witr has 22,374. Sentry has the larger community by that measure.
Are Sentry and witr free?
Both are open source. Sentry has no licence declared in this registry, and witr is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Sentry and witr?
Sentry is written in Python and witr 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 witr?
Choose Sentry if you want the larger community (44,792 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose witr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.