Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — Sentry vs Highlight.io vs Axiom

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## Sentry (sentry)
- URL: https://sentry.io
- Category: Monitoring & error tracking
- Cost: mixed — Free Developer: 5K errors, 5M spans, 50 replays, 5GB logs/mo, 30-day retention, 1 user. Team $26/mo with 50K errors. Business $80/mo.
- What it is: The default error-monitoring tool for web and mobile, capturing exceptions with full stack traces, source maps, release tagging and breadcrumbs, plus tracing, logs and session replay. It is licensed under the Functional Source License, which converts to Apache 2.0 after two years, and is self-hostable via Docker Compose.
- Why builders pick it: One wizard command wires it into a Next.js app and you stop learning about production breakage from angry users; the source-mapped stack trace usually points straight at the offending line.
- Trap: 5K errors/month sounds generous until one crash loop burns it in an hour, so turn on spike protection and inbound filters early. Self-hosting needs 4 CPUs and 16GB RAM plus 16GB swap, and loses spike protection and the Seer AI features.
- Wiring: npx @sentry/wizard@latest -i nextjs
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/sentry

## Highlight.io (highlight-io)
- URL: https://www.highlight.io
- Category: Monitoring & error tracking
- Cost: free — Self-hosting is free under Apache 2.0. The hosted cloud ended 28 February 2026 and existing users were migrated to LaunchDarkly Observability.
- What it is: An open-source full-stack monitoring app combining session replay, error monitoring, logging and OpenTelemetry tracing in one self-hostable Docker stack. LaunchDarkly acquired it and folded the features into LaunchDarkly Observability. The GitHub repo remains public and actively committed to, but the hosted app.highlight.io service has shut down.
- Why builders pick it: It is now purely a self-host play: if you want replay plus errors plus traces on your own hardware with no per-event bill, this is one of very few Apache-2.0 options.
- Trap: Do not plan around the cloud product. It ended on 28 February 2026 and SDK snippets had to be repointed at LaunchDarkly before 1 March 2026. Self-hosting means operating ClickHouse, Kafka and Postgres yourself.
- Wiring: git clone https://github.com/highlight/highlight && docker compose up
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/highlight-io

## Axiom (axiom)
- URL: https://axiom.co
- Category: Monitoring & error tracking
- Cost: mixed — Free Personal: 500GB ingest/mo, 25GB storage, 30-day retention, 10 GB-hours query. Axiom Cloud $25/mo platform fee including 1TB ingest, 100GB storage and 100 GB-hours.
- What it is: A serverless log and event store built on object storage and queried with the APL language, with dashboards, monitors and native OpenTelemetry ingest. The permanently free Personal plan allows 500GB of ingest per month, which is enormous for a solo project. Cloud-only, no self-hosted build.
- Why builders pick it: 500GB a month free is more log volume than a side project will ever generate, and the Vercel and Cloudflare integrations mean you can ship logs without writing a shipper.
- Trap: Free retention is fixed at 30 days and query compute is capped at 10 GB-hours per month, so busy dashboards hit that ceiling long before ingest becomes the constraint. No self-hosting option exists.
- Wiring: npm i @axiomhq/js
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/axiom

## Quick read

- Free with no card: Highlight.io.

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=sentry,highlight-io,axiom