Sentry vs Datadog vs Moneat: The 2026 Error Monitoring Comparison
If you're searching for an error monitoring comparison, you're trying to answer: "Is what I'm paying worth it?" or "Is there something better?" This post compares Sentry, Datadog, and Moneat honestly — features, pricing, and real-world costs.
The Short Version
| Sentry | Datadog | Moneat | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Error tracking | ✅ Best-in-class | ✅ Good (via APM) | ✅ Full (Sentry SDK-compatible) |
| Session replays | ✅ Web + mobile | ✅ Browser RUM | ✅ Web + mobile |
| Logs | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Uptime monitoring | ✅ Basic | ✅ Synthetics | ✅ 10+ check types |
| Status pages | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| On-call / incident management | ❌ | ✅ (add-on) | ✅ ($5/user/mo) |
| Infrastructure monitoring | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| LLM / AI observability | ✅ | ✅ (add-on) | ✅ |
| Self-hostable | ✅ (BSL license) | ❌ | ✅ (AGPL) |
| Datadog Agent compatible | ❌ | ✅ Native | ✅ |
| Sentry SDK compatible | ✅ Native | ❌ | ✅ |
| Starting price | $29/mo | ~$31/host/mo | $29/mo |
Sentry: The Gold Standard (With Caveats)
Sentry built the error monitoring category. Its SDK ecosystem is unmatched, and the $29/month Team plan is genuinely good for small teams. The problems emerge at scale.
Sentry uses per-category pay-as-you-go budgets — errors, replays, spans, and logs each have separate overage rates. A startup burning 500K errors/month, 200 replays, and 50 GB logs sees the Team plan balloon from $29 to ~$145/month. At 5M errors/month, the Business plan exceeds $1,100/month with overages.
Sentry also lacks capabilities modern teams need:
- No status pages — requires a separate tool
- No on-call / incident management — requires PagerDuty or OpsGenie
- No infrastructure monitoring — requires Datadog or Grafana
- Seer AI debugger costs $40/active contributor/month extra
Datadog: The Enterprise Swiss Army Knife
Datadog covers everything — APM, logs, infrastructure, synthetics, RUM, security, CI visibility. The problem: you pay for every product separately, and bills are notoriously unpredictable.
Pricing is host-based, per-product:
| Product | Rate | 10 hosts/month |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure monitoring | $15/host/mo | $150 |
| APM + tracing | $31/host/mo | $310 |
| Log ingestion | $0.10/GB | varies |
| Log indexing (15-day retention) | $1.70/million events | varies |
| Session Replay (Browser RUM) | $1.80/1,000 sessions | varies |
| Synthetics (uptime) | $5/10K test runs | varies |
Just infrastructure + APM = $460/month for 10 hosts. Add logs and RUM and you're past $1,000/month. Powerful, but priced for enterprises with procurement teams.
What Datadog lacks:
- No self-hosting — data lives in Datadog's cloud only
- No Sentry SDK compatibility — switching means rewriting instrumentation
- Vendor lock-in — proprietary agents make switching painful
Moneat: The Self-Hosted, Sentry-Compatible Alternative
Moneat delivers Sentry's developer experience and Datadog's feature breadth — while you own your data and control costs.
Zero-Migration Sentry Compatibility
Moneat is a drop-in Sentry replacement. Update your DSN — that's it:
// Before
Sentry.init({ dsn: "https://[email protected]/456" })
// After (zero other changes)
Sentry.init({ dsn: "https://[email protected]/api/456" })
Every SDK call works identically. No new SDK to learn, no code changes.
Pricing That Doesn't Punish Scale
- Pro ($29/mo): 50 GB unified ingestion (errors, replays, logs, transactions, LLM events share one pool), 10 uptime monitors, status pages included
- Team ($79/mo): 200 GB ingestion — the same usage costing $1,100+ on Sentry
Self-Hosting
Run Moneat on your own infrastructure (AGPL license) for GDPR, HIPAA, or data residency compliance. Docker-based, deployable in minutes.
Full Feature List
- Error tracking (Sentry SDK compatible) + Datadog Agent compatible
- Session replays (web + mobile), logs (OTLP), distributed tracing / APM
- Continuous profiling, infrastructure / database / network / Kubernetes monitoring
- Synthetic testing, SBOM / security scanning, dynamic instrumentation
- Uptime monitoring (HTTP, TCP, Ping, DNS, SSL, WebSocket, DB, Docker, push)
- Status pages, on-call ($5/user/mo), LLM observability
- MCP Server (Enterprise), product analytics (funnels, retention)
Side-by-Side Cost Scenarios
Scenario: 10-person startup (500K errors, 200 replays, 50 GB logs)
| Platform | Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Moneat Pro | $44/mo | Base $29 + $15 on-call (3 users) |
| Sentry Team | ~$145/mo | Massive overages on errors, replays, logs |
| Datadog | $600-800/mo | APM + infra + logs + RUM |
Scenario: Mid-size app (5M errors, 1K replays, 200 GB logs)
| Platform | Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Moneat Team | ~$104/mo | Base $79 + on-call |
| Sentry Business | ~$1,129/mo | Per-event overages dominate |
| Datadog | $2,000-4,000/mo | Multiple products, host-based pricing |
At scale, Moneat is 10–30× cheaper for equivalent coverage.
Which One Should You Choose?
Choose Sentry if:
- You're a small team with < $200/mo budget
- Sentry SDK-native profiling is critical
- You don't need status pages, on-call, or infrastructure monitoring
Choose Datadog if:
- You're an enterprise with a dedicated platform engineering team
- You have existing contracts and negotiated pricing
- Deep APM traces justify the cost
Choose Moneat if:
- You're hitting Sentry overage costs and want predictable billing
- You need data ownership (GDPR, HIPAA, data residency)
- You want error monitoring + status pages + on-call + infrastructure in one platform
- You're already using Sentry SDKs and want zero migration effort
Get Started with Moneat
Moneat's free plan includes 1 GB unified ingestion and 3 uptime monitors. Paid plans start at $29/month. Self-hosting is free forever under AGPL.
If you're on Sentry, you can switch in under 10 minutes — no code changes required.