Updated October 2026 · hands-on opinion, not vendor copy
Quick verdict: Sentry if you want the full product — tracing, session replay, releases — with zero ops. GlitchTip if you have a server already and want error tracking for the price of electricity: it speaks the same SDK protocol, so you can start free and migrate without code changes.
Sentry wins on breadth and polish: performance tracing, session replay, release health, and first-class SDKs everywhere. GlitchTip wins on price and control: open source, self-hosted, and deliberately simple.
GlitchTip itself is free, but it is not free to run: a small VM, Postgres, backups and updates. At roughly $6-12/month of hosting plus an hour of maintenance each quarter, it pays off the moment your Sentry bill would exceed that — which at Sentry’s event pricing happens quickly.
GlitchTip accepts Sentry SDK events natively. Point your existing Raven/sentry-sdk DSN at it and everything keeps working — which makes it the honest budget pick and a real migration path, not a lock-in trap.
Product teams without an ops person: Sentry, the free tier first. Engineers who already run a VPS and want observability for cents: GlitchTip.