Grafana Cloud wins as the better general monitoring choice because its hosted observability stack supports existing Prometheus metrics and brings log handling into the same service. The free tier starts at 10,000 metric series, with trace ingestion included as well. Sentry is better at getting from an application error to useful debugging context: its stack traces show local variable values, and the product includes release tracking and session replay. For a general observability platform, Grafana Cloud has broader coverage at the free level.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Grafana Cloud | Sentry |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free available | Free available |
| Paid price | $19.00 USD/mo | $26.00 USD/mo |
| Prometheus Compatible | — | |
| Logs Ingestion | — | |
| Distributed Tracing | — | |
| Alerting | ||
| On Call Scheduling | — | |
| Dashboard Templates | — | |
| Grafana Agent | — | |
| K8s Integration | — | |
| Data Retention Free | 13 months metrics | — |
| SSO support | Pro+ | — |
| Error Tracking | — | |
| Performance Monitoring | — | |
| Session Replay | — | |
| Source Maps | — | |
| Release Tracking | — | |
| Self Hosted | — | Enterprise only |
| Data Retention | — | 14-90 days by plan |
| Sdk Languages | — | 100+ languages |
| Sso | — | Business+ |
| Score | 8/10 | 8/10 |
Grafana Cloud
8
Sentry
8
Runner-up
Choose Grafana Cloud as the default for monitoring across a service, especially if Prometheus is already in your stack. Its free quotas cover multiple telemetry types, while Sentry's strongest advantage is code-level error context.
Pricing
Both products have no-cost plans, but the allowances count different things. Grafana Cloud's free tier includes 10,000 active Prometheus series and 50 GB of monthly log ingestion. It also covers 50 GB of traces, with 14-day retention for logs and traces. That gives a small team room to watch service health before paying for higher volume.
Sentry's Developer plan includes 5,000 errors per month for one user. Performance monitoring and session replay come with it. The limit maps neatly to application error volume, but the single-user cap makes it a solo plan rather than a shared team workspace.
Grafana Cloud Pro has a 19 USD/month platform fee, then usage charges: $8 per extra 1,000 active series and $0.50 per GB of logs or traces beyond the free allowances. This gives teams room to grow, but cardinality and ingestion need budget attention. Sentry Team lists 26 USD/month for unlimited users and 50,000 monthly errors. Data retention runs 14 days, and paid plans can enable pay-as-you-go overages. Its allowance is easy to understand, though event growth can still raise the bill. Sentry Business is 80 USD/month and lifts the listed limit to 100,000 errors per month. It keeps data for 90 days and includes priority support. That plan fits teams where a two-week debugging window is too short, while its set event allowance still gives volume a ceiling.
Features and Workflow
Grafana Cloud runs the LGTM stack, with Loki for logs and Tempo for traces. A team already using Prometheus can remote-write to Mimir and keep its recording rules and alerting rules. Dashboards give developers a shared place to inspect service telemetry.
That scope is a better fit when the same team needs to follow infrastructure signals and application behavior. However, alert manager and on-call setup can be complex, and Pro charges can climb when metric cardinality spikes. Grafana Cloud fits teams prepared to manage alert setup and watch their series counts.
Sentry centers its workflow on application errors and performance. Its SDKs cover more than 100 languages and frameworks, while error stack traces can include local variable values and the exact line that threw. Session replay links a reproduction to an error, and release tracking identifies the deploy associated with a regression.
The tradeoff is retention and volume control. Sentry Team keeps data for 14 days, and its free Developer plan is limited to one user. When a paid plan hits its monthly error quota, events are dropped by default unless pay-as-you-go overages are enabled, so owners need to decide how much unexpected ingestion they will accept.
Who Each Product Suits
Grafana Cloud suits small and mid-size engineering teams that want managed Prometheus monitoring and the hosted Grafana stack without operating that infrastructure themselves. It is a natural first choice for an existing Prometheus setup, and its free limits make it practical to evaluate with real telemetry before moving to a paid plan. Teams should still track series cardinality and data volume as services change, since usage billing can move faster than the base fee suggests.
Sentry suits developers who spend most of their monitoring time tracing application failures back to a code path. A solo developer can start with the free plan, while a team can move to Team for unlimited users and a higher error allowance. Teams with access-control requirements can step up to Business for SSO and advanced permissions.