[opensourcedex]

Highlight is a free, open source monitoring & observability project written in TypeScript and released under a custom open-source licence. It has 9,375 GitHub stars, 675 forks and 553 open issues, and was last pushed 28 days ago. On this registry it ranks #48 of 97 tracked projects in Monitoring & Observability, and is listed as an open source replacement for 3 paid products, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 5 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

What is Highlight?

What it is

Highlight is an open-source, full-stack monitoring platform for modern web applications. It lives in the Infrastructure & Operations / Monitoring & Observability ecosystem, and its repository lists TypeScript, Golang, APM, metrics, tracing, and self-hosted as topics.

The problem it addresses is fragmented web-application observability. Developers often need separate tools to capture frontend sessions, group errors, search logs, trace operations, and alert on regressions. Highlight combines session replay, error monitoring, logging, and tracing so users can move from a session to console logs and errors, or from an error or log to related sessions. The README says the project aims to be easy to install with a few lines of code, and it offers a hosted service and a Docker self-hosted path.

Key capabilities

  • Session replay captures frontend sessions and can show console logs, embedded errors, and comments.
  • Error monitoring groups repeated errors with customizable grouping rules and supports alerting rules that control frequency and destination.
  • Logging supports search across logs with automatic property collection, threshold-based alerts, and an alerts dashboard.
  • Tracing supports search across traces with automatic property collection and threshold-based alerts.
  • The platform links signals by embedding session replay inside error and log views.
  • SDK support is listed, and the README says the client SDK snippet is used after account setup.
  • Integrations with other tools are listed, and topics include metrics, APM, and distributed tracing.

Who uses it and how

  • Teams use the hosted service at app.highlight.io after creating an account and installing the client SDK snippet.
  • Self-hosters deploy a hobby instance on Linux with Docker after cloning the repository with submodules, with a recommended minimum of 8GB RAM, 4 CPUs, and 64GB disk.
  • Frontend developers use session replay and console logs to understand why bugs happen.
  • Backend developers use logs and traces to search server behavior and set alert thresholds.
  • Support or product teams can comment on errors and sessions to communicate about user frustration and bugs.

Getting started

Hosted use starts at app.highlight.io, then the user installs the client SDK snippet. Self-hosted hobby use clones the GitHub repository with submodules and runs a one-line Docker deployment on Linux.

When to use it — and when not to

Use Highlight when a team wants an open-source alternative to the paid products it positions itself against, including Datadog, sentry-hosted, and FullStory, and needs session replay, error monitoring, logging, and tracing in one platform. Avoid it when the team cannot operate self-hosted infrastructure or review the license, because the provided metadata lists NOASSERTION, 553 open issues, and 0 contributors. A self-hoster must operate the Docker deployment and meet the hardware recommendation, while the hosted option may reduce that burden but still requires SDK installation and account setup.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

docs-thumbnail

PRs Welcome Join Discord Community GitHub commit activity GitHub closed issues

Docs - Community (Support & Feedback) - Feature request - Bug report

highlight.io: The open-source, fullstack monitoring platform.

highlight.io is a monitoring tool for the next generation of developers (like you!). Unlike the age-old, outdated tools out there, we aim to build a cohesive, modern and fully-featured monitoring solution, something we wished WE had. And it's all open source :)

At a high level, highlight.io's feature set is:

We strive to make highlight.io as easy to install as a few lines of code in any environment.

Read more about our features, values and mission below, and get started at https://highlight.io today!

Table of Contents

Get started

Hosted highlight.io (free to get started!)

The fastest and most reliable way to get started with highlight.io is signing up for free at app.highlight.io. After making an account, getting started is as easy as installing the client SDK snippet.

Hobby self-hosted

Deploy a hobby instance in one line on Linux with Docker (we recommend at least 8GB of RAM, 4 CPUs, and 64 GB of disk space):

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/highlight/highlight
# or `git submodule update --init --recursive` on git < 2.13
cd docker && ./run-hobby.sh

After a brief frontend load time, the app should be accessible at https://localhost. Use the password set in docker/.env variable ADMIN_PASSWORD with any valid email address.

Good for docs

  • Console logs: Analyze the logs printed (console.error, console.log, etc..) to the console from your frontend -> docs
  • Embedded Error Monitoring: See the errors associated with a given session to understand what the user was doing leading up to them.
  • Session Comments: Comment on errors to communicate with your team on user frustration, bugs, and more! -> docs
  • Integrations with your favorite tools -> docs

Frame 43972

Error Monitoring: Understand WHAT bugs are happening.

  • Customizable Error Grouping: Customize rules for grouping repeated errors -> docs
  • Customizable Alerting Rules: Customize how often, and where alerts are sent -> docs
  • Embedded Session Replay: See all of the sessions associated with any given error.
  • SDK Support: Support for a long (and growing!) list of SDKs.
  • Integrations with your favorite tools -> docs

error-monitoring

Logs: Dig deeper into what's happening on your server.

  • Powerful Search: Search across all your logs, with automatic property collection -> docs
  • Log Alerts: Set thresholds for your log alerts, and view them in the alerts dashboard -> docs
  • Embedded Session Replay and Errors: See all of the sessions & errors associated to a log.
  • SDK Support: Support for a long (and growing!) list of SDKs.
  • Integrations with your favorite tools -> docs

logging

Traces: Track the performance of operations on your server.

  • Powerful Search: Search across all your traces, with automatic property collection -> docs
  • Log Alerts: Set thresholds for your log alerts, and view them in the alerts dashboard -> docs
  • Embedded Session Replay, Errors and Logs: See all of the sessions, errors, and logs associated to a trace.
  • SDK Support: Support for a long (and growing!) list of SDKs.
  • Integrations with your favorite tools -> docs

logging

More?! Metrics? Traces? Merch?

Have an idea for what we should build next? Please share our community or via a Github Issue!

Read a full list of highlight.io features.

SDKs

All of our SDKs for highlight.io can be found in the sdk directory. To get started with these SDKs, we recommend the getting started guide in our docs.

Contributors

Jay Khatri
Jay Khatri
💻 📖		 Vadim Korolik
Vadim Korolik
💻 readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is Highlight free to use?

Highlight is open source. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Highlight do?

Real-time observability for modern web applications

What is Highlight written in?

Highlight is primarily written in TypeScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/highlight/highlight, and it has 9,375 GitHub stars.

What is a good open source alternative to Datadog?

Highlight is one of the open source options listed as an alternative to Datadog, FullStory, Sentry (hosted). Compare licences, stars and activity side by side on the Highlight profile.