Tired of Self-Hosting Sentry? Try Bugsink!

Tired of self-hosting Sentry? You’re not alone! Bugsink is a modern, self-hosted error tracking alternative that is built to be easy to manage and resource-efficient. It’s a drop-in replacement for Sentry that you can set up in (literal) minutes.

Common Struggles

Having trouble keeping your self-hosted Sentry instance running? You’re not alone! People reach out to me every day with the same complaints:

“Looking for sentry alternatives to selfhost easily without fighting my tools.”
“Looking for an alternative to sentry that is not that resource heavy.”
“We’re having problems running Sentry in self-hosted”

In fact, I was in the same boat as you. Having successfully run Sentry back in 2016, I was shocked by the complexity and resource requirements when I tried to set it up again in 2023. My blog post “Why I Gave Up on Self-Hosted Sentry” gives the full story (which ends with me creating Bugsink).

What is Bugsink?

If you’re tired of self-hosting Sentry, you probably know what error tracking is, and why it’s awesome.

Bugsink is error tracking software, but built to be self-hosted. That means running it on your own servers is not just something that’s “possible in theory”, but a core design principle. Bugsink is built with a focus on simplicity and efficiency from the ground up.

It’s a modern alternative to Sentry that’s designed to be:

Drop-in replacement: Compatible with Sentry SDKs, so you don’t need to change your codebase.
Efficient Resource Usage: Unlike Sentry’s 16GB RAM bare minimum, Bugsink runs smoothly on the cheapest hardware you can find, such as a $5/month Hetzner Cloud instance.

Installation (in Minutes)

Installation is simple and quick. Here's the quick guide using Docker:

docker pull bugsink/bugsink:latest

docker run \
  -e SECRET_KEY=vsouXMLrB0i6mcrzJKQm3nYthjbQDWUrcRzC2ebPzn9pAjI24f \
  -e CREATE_SUPERUSER=admin:admin \
  -e PORT=8000 \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  bugsink/bugsink

Once the Docker is running, Bugsink will be available on port 8000. Visit http://localhost:8000/, where you’ll see a login screen. The default username and password are admin.

Now, you can set up your first project and start tracking errors.

Full Installation Guides

If you want to read the full installation guide, we have detailed instructions for different setups. Select an installation approach that fits your environment:

Docker Installation: ideal for containerized setups with options for MySQL or SQLite.
Local Install: quick testing on a local machine for Python developers.
Single Server Production: high-performance production setup using Nginx and Gunicorn on a single (cheap) server.

Each guide is crafted to make installation as seamless as possible so you can start using Bugsink without the usual self-hosted pains.