Sentry vs CloudWatch (2026): Complete Comparison for Error Tracking & Monitoring
Category: Cloud Data Engineering & Analytics
Publish Date: February 12, 2026
Choosing between Sentry and Amazon CloudWatch comes down to one question: are you monitoring your application or your infrastructure?
Sentry is a developer-first error tracking tool that catches application-level bugs, crashes, and performance issues with detailed stack traces. CloudWatch is AWS’s native monitoring service that tracks infrastructure metrics, collects logs, and triggers alarms across your entire AWS environment.
The short answer: most production teams use both — Sentry for catching bugs and CloudWatch for watching infrastructure. But if you can only choose one, this guide will help you decide.
Quick Comparison Table
| Feature | Sentry | Amazon CloudWatch |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Application error tracking | AWS infrastructure monitoring |
| Error tracking | Excellent — stack traces, breadcrumbs, grouping | Basic — log pattern matching only |
| Performance monitoring | Transaction tracing, web vitals | Metrics, custom dashboards |
| Log management | Limited (focused on errors) | Comprehensive — CloudWatch Logs |
| Alerting | Issue-based alerts, Slack/PagerDuty/email | Metric alarms, composite alarms, SNS |
| Setup time | ~10 minutes (install SDK) | Already enabled for AWS services |
| Language support | 30+ languages and frameworks | Language-agnostic (log-based) |
| AWS integration | Via SDK (works anywhere) | Native — built into every AWS service |
| Free tier | 5K errors/month, 10K transactions | 10 custom metrics, 10 alarms, 5GB logs |
| Paid pricing | From $26/month (Team plan) | Pay-per-use (varies widely) |
| Best for | Developers debugging application bugs | Ops teams monitoring AWS infrastructure |
What Is Sentry?
Sentry is an open-source application monitoring platform that specializes in real-time error tracking and performance monitoring. When your code throws an exception, Sentry captures it immediately with the full context: stack trace, user information, browser details, breadcrumbs (the sequence of events that led to the error), and the exact line of code that failed.
What makes Sentry different:
- Automatic error grouping — Sentry intelligently groups similar errors together instead of flooding you with 10,000 duplicate alerts. If the same
TypeErrorhits 500 users, you see one issue with a count of 500. - Stack traces with source code — You see the exact line of code that failed, including the values of local variables at the time of the crash.
- Breadcrumbs — A timeline showing what happened before the error: which API calls were made, which buttons the user clicked, which pages they visited.
- Release tracking — Deploy a new version and Sentry tells you which errors are new, which are fixed, and which regressed.
- Performance monitoring — Track slow transactions, database queries, and API calls. See where your application spends its time.
- Session replay — Watch a video-like reconstruction of what the user saw and did before the error occurred.
Languages and frameworks supported:
JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, Python, Django, Flask, Node.js, Express, Java, Spring, Go, Ruby, Rails, PHP, Laravel, .NET, Rust, Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, React Native, and more — over 30 platforms.
What Is Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch is AWS’s built-in monitoring and observability service. It collects metrics, logs, and events from virtually every AWS service and provides dashboards, alarms, and automated responses.
What makes CloudWatch different:
- Native AWS integration — CloudWatch is built into AWS. Your EC2 instances, Lambda functions, RDS databases, and S3 buckets automatically send metrics to CloudWatch without installing anything.
- Infrastructure metrics — CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O, network traffic, request counts, latency — CloudWatch tracks all of this out of the box for AWS services.
- CloudWatch Logs — A centralized log management system. Application logs, VPC flow logs, Lambda execution logs, and CloudTrail audit logs all go to one place.
- CloudWatch Alarms — Set thresholds on any metric and trigger actions: send an SNS notification, auto-scale an instance group, or run a Lambda function.
- CloudWatch Logs Insights — A query language for searching and analyzing logs. Think of it as SQL for your log data.
- Application Signals — A newer feature that provides application performance monitoring (APM) with auto-instrumentation for Java, Python, and .NET applications.
Services that integrate natively:
EC2, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, ECS, EKS, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, Kinesis, Step Functions, CloudFront, Elastic Load Balancing, and virtually every other AWS service.
Sentry vs CloudWatch: Detailed Comparison
Error Tracking
This is where the two tools diverge the most.
Sentry was built specifically for error tracking. When an unhandled exception occurs in your application:
- Sentry captures the full stack trace with source map support
- Groups it with similar errors automatically
- Shows you the exact line of code, the variable values, and the user’s session
- Provides breadcrumbs showing the 20 events that led to the crash
- Tracks which release introduced the error
CloudWatch approaches error tracking differently. It relies on log-based error detection:
- Your application writes errors to stdout/stderr or log files
- CloudWatch Logs collects those log lines
- You create metric filters that match patterns like
"ERROR"or"Exception" - CloudWatch counts occurrences and can trigger alarms
The difference: Sentry gives you “This TypeError: Cannot read property 'id' of undefined started in release v2.3.1, affects 342 users, happens on the checkout page, and here is the exact code.” CloudWatch gives you “Your application logged 47 lines containing the word ERROR in the last hour.”
Winner: Sentry — by a wide margin for application error tracking.
Performance Monitoring
Sentry provides application-level performance monitoring:
- Transaction tracing — See how long each API request takes, broken down by database queries, external API calls, and rendering time
- Web vitals — Track Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) that affect your Google search ranking
- Slow query detection — Identify database queries that take too long
- Custom spans — Instrument specific code paths to measure performance
CloudWatch provides infrastructure-level performance monitoring:
- Service metrics — CPU, memory, disk, network for EC2, RDS, Lambda duration, API Gateway latency
- Custom metrics — Push any numeric value from your application
- CloudWatch Application Signals — Newer APM feature with auto-instrumentation (limited language support)
- Container Insights — Monitoring for ECS and EKS clusters
Winner: Depends. Sentry wins for application performance (where in my code is it slow?). CloudWatch wins for infrastructure performance (is my server running out of memory?).
Log Management
Sentry is not a log management tool. It captures error events, not log streams. You can attach breadcrumbs and context to errors, but Sentry is not designed to store and search terabytes of application logs.
CloudWatch Logs is a full-featured log management service:
- Centralized collection from all AWS services
- CloudWatch Logs Insights for searching with a SQL-like query language
- Log retention policies (1 day to 10 years, or indefinite)
- Export to S3 for long-term archival
- Real-time log streaming with subscriptions
Winner: CloudWatch — it is a dedicated log management platform. Sentry does not compete in this category.
Alerting & Notifications
Sentry alerting is issue-based:
- Alert when a new error is detected
- Alert when an error exceeds a frequency threshold (e.g., more than 100 in 5 minutes)
- Alert when an error affects a specific number of users
- Integrations: Slack, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, email, webhooks, Jira, GitHub
CloudWatch alerting is metric-based:
- Alert when a metric crosses a threshold (e.g., CPU > 80% for 5 minutes)
- Composite alarms (combine multiple conditions)
- Actions: SNS notifications, Lambda functions, Auto Scaling, EC2 actions
- Anomaly detection (uses ML to detect unusual patterns)
Winner: Tie. They alert on fundamentally different things. Sentry alerts on application errors. CloudWatch alerts on infrastructure metrics. You likely need both.
Integration & Compatibility
Sentry works anywhere:
- Install via SDK in your application code
- Works on AWS, GCP, Azure, on-premises, or your laptop
- 30+ language SDKs with framework-specific integrations
- Source map upload for minified JavaScript
- GitHub and GitLab integration for linking errors to commits
CloudWatch is AWS-native:
- Automatic metric collection for all AWS services
- CloudWatch agent for custom metrics and logs from EC2
- Works with non-AWS environments via the agent, but that is not its strength
- Tightly integrated with IAM, SNS, Lambda, and Auto Scaling
Winner: Sentry for multi-cloud or non-AWS environments. CloudWatch for AWS-heavy architectures.
Pricing Comparison
Sentry Pricing
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Developer (Free) | $0/month | 5K errors, 10K performance transactions, 1 user |
| Team | $26/month | 50K errors, 100K transactions, unlimited users |
| Business | $80/month | 50K errors, 100K transactions, advanced features |
| Enterprise | Custom | Volume discounts, dedicated support |
Additional usage is billed per event. Sentry offers spike protection to prevent surprise bills from sudden traffic increases.
CloudWatch Pricing
CloudWatch uses pay-per-use pricing that can be complex:
| Component | Free Tier | Paid Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Custom metrics | 10 metrics | $0.30/metric/month |
| Alarms | 10 alarms | $0.10/alarm/month |
| Logs ingested | 5 GB/month | $0.50/GB |
| Logs stored | 5 GB/month | $0.03/GB/month |
| Logs Insights queries | — | $0.005/GB scanned |
| Dashboard | 3 dashboards | $3/dashboard/month |
Real-world cost example: A medium-sized application with 20 custom metrics, 15 alarms, 50GB of logs/month, and 2 dashboards costs roughly $35-50/month on CloudWatch. That is comparable to Sentry’s Team plan.
Winner: Sentry for predictable pricing. CloudWatch can get expensive with high log volumes but is “free” if you only use basic AWS service metrics.
Ease of Setup
Sentry setup (~10 minutes):
# Install the SDK
npm install @sentry/nextjs
# Initialize in your app
npx @sentry/wizard@latest -i nextjsThat is it. Sentry auto-detects errors, captures stack traces, and starts sending data immediately. The wizard configures source maps, release tracking, and performance monitoring.
CloudWatch setup (already running):
If you are on AWS, CloudWatch is already collecting basic metrics for your services. No setup needed for default metrics. However, custom metrics, detailed monitoring, and log collection require additional configuration:
- Install the CloudWatch agent on EC2 instances
- Configure log groups and retention policies
- Create metric filters for error detection
- Build dashboards and alarms manually
Winner: Sentry for time-to-first-insight. CloudWatch for zero-config infrastructure metrics.
Dashboard & UI
Sentry has a modern, developer-focused UI:
- Issue list with real-time error counts and trend graphs
- Detailed error pages with stack traces, breadcrumbs, and user context
- Performance dashboards with transaction waterfall views
- Release health tracking with crash-free session rates
- Session replay viewer
CloudWatch has a functional but complex UI:
- Customizable metric dashboards with multiple widget types
- Logs Insights query editor with visualization
- Alarm management interface
- Application Signals dashboard (newer APM feature)
Winner: Sentry — the UI is designed for developers and is significantly more intuitive for debugging. CloudWatch’s UI is powerful but has a steeper learning curve.
When to Use Sentry
Choose Sentry when:
- You are a development team that needs to find and fix bugs fast
- You build web or mobile applications (React, Next.js, Python, Node.js, etc.)
- You want detailed error context — stack traces, breadcrumbs, session replay
- You need to track which release introduced a bug
- Core Web Vitals and frontend performance matter for your SEO
- You deploy to multiple cloud providers or on-premises
- You want to be up and running in under 15 minutes
Sentry is not ideal for: Infrastructure monitoring, server resource tracking, log aggregation, or AWS-specific operational metrics.
When to Use CloudWatch
Choose CloudWatch when:
- You are an ops or DevOps team managing AWS infrastructure
- You need to monitor server health — CPU, memory, disk, network
- You run serverless workloads on Lambda and want execution metrics
- You need centralized log management for compliance or auditing
- You want auto-scaling triggers based on real-time metrics
- Your entire stack is on AWS and you want native integration
- You want anomaly detection on infrastructure metrics
CloudWatch is not ideal for: Application-level error tracking, frontend performance monitoring, or debugging specific code issues.
Can You Use Both Together?
Yes — and most production teams do. Sentry and CloudWatch are complementary, not competing tools.
Here is how they work together:
| Scenario | CloudWatch Handles | Sentry Handles |
|---|---|---|
| Your API returns 500 errors | Tracks the spike in 5xx metrics, triggers an alarm | Captures the exact exception, stack trace, and affected users |
| Lambda function times out | Logs the timeout, tracks duration metrics | Shows which code path caused the timeout and why |
| Database connection pool exhausted | Monitors RDS connection count, sends alarm | Captures the ConnectionError with the query that failed |
| Memory leak in Node.js | Tracks EC2 memory usage trending upward | Captures OutOfMemoryError with heap snapshot context |
| Frontend JavaScript crash | Not applicable (CloudWatch is server-side) | Captures the error with browser info, user session, and replay |
The workflow looks like this:
- CloudWatch alarm fires: “5xx error rate exceeded 5% on API Gateway”
- On-call engineer opens Sentry to see what is actually failing
- Sentry shows:
TypeError: Cannot read property 'items' of nullincheckout.js:142, started 20 minutes ago, affects 89 users, introduced in releasev3.2.1 - Engineer rolls back to
v3.2.0, Sentry confirms the error stopped
CloudWatch tells you something is wrong. Sentry tells you what, where, and why.
Sentry vs CloudWatch vs Datadog
Some teams also consider Datadog as an all-in-one alternative. Here is how it compares:
| Feature | Sentry | CloudWatch | Datadog |
|---|---|---|---|
| Error tracking | Excellent | Basic | Good |
| Infrastructure monitoring | None | Excellent | Excellent |
| APM | Good | Basic (Application Signals) | Excellent |
| Log management | Minimal | Good | Excellent |
| Pricing | Affordable ($26+/mo) | Pay-per-use | Expensive ($15+/host/mo) |
| Setup complexity | Low | Low (on AWS) | Medium |
| Best for | Dev teams | AWS ops teams | Enterprises wanting one tool |
When to choose Datadog: You want a single platform for infrastructure, APM, logs, and error tracking, and you have the budget. Datadog starts at $15/host/month for infrastructure monitoring, plus additional costs for APM, logs, and error tracking — which can add up quickly for larger deployments.
When to skip Datadog: You are a small-to-medium team and the cost is not justified. Sentry (errors) + CloudWatch (infrastructure) gives you 90% of Datadog’s value at a fraction of the cost.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Sentry free?
Yes, Sentry offers a free Developer plan that includes 5,000 errors per month, 10,000 performance transactions, and 500 session replays. It is limited to one user, but it is a great way to try Sentry before upgrading. The Team plan starts at $26/month with unlimited users.
Can CloudWatch track application errors?
Sort of. CloudWatch can detect errors in logs using metric filters (matching patterns like “ERROR” or “Exception”), but it does not provide stack traces, error grouping, or debugging context. For true application error tracking, you need a dedicated tool like Sentry.
Is Sentry better than CloudWatch?
They serve different purposes. Sentry is better for application error tracking and debugging. CloudWatch is better for infrastructure monitoring and log management. Most teams use both. Comparing them directly is like comparing a debugger to a server dashboard — they solve different problems.
What is the best monitoring tool for AWS?
For a complete monitoring stack on AWS, we recommend:
- CloudWatch for infrastructure metrics and logs (it is already there)
- Sentry for application error tracking and performance monitoring
- CloudWatch Alarms + SNS for operational alerts
- Sentry Alerts for development/bug alerts
This combination covers infrastructure health, application errors, and performance monitoring without the cost of an all-in-one platform like Datadog.
Can I self-host Sentry?
Yes, Sentry is open-source and can be self-hosted. The self-hosted version is free and includes most features. However, self-hosting requires managing the infrastructure (PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, ClickHouse), which is a significant operational burden. Most teams find the hosted version more cost-effective.
Does Sentry affect my application’s performance?
Sentry’s SDK is designed to be lightweight. It adds minimal overhead (~1-5ms per request for performance monitoring). Error capture only runs when an exception occurs. You can configure sample rates to reduce the volume of performance data collected if needed.
Conclusion
Sentry and CloudWatch are not competitors — they are partners in a complete monitoring stack.
- Use CloudWatch to watch your AWS infrastructure: are your servers healthy, are your Lambda functions running, are your logs centralized?
- Use Sentry to watch your application code: are there bugs, which release caused them, which users are affected, and where exactly in the code did things go wrong?
If you are forced to choose one: pick CloudWatch if you are an ops-focused team running serverless workloads entirely on AWS. Pick Sentry if you are a development team shipping features fast and need to catch bugs before your users report them.
But the best answer? Use both. CloudWatch is already running if you are on AWS. Adding Sentry takes 10 minutes and immediately gives you superpowers for debugging production issues.
Need help setting up production-grade monitoring for your application? At Metosys, we specialize in monitoring with Sentry, Prometheus & CloudWatch and real-time metrics and reporting systems. We can design a monitoring stack that catches bugs before your users do. Get in touch to discuss your setup.
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