# Grafana Cloud vs Sentry

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/grafana-cloud-vs-sentry/

Every value below is read from Grafana Cloud's and Sentry's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Grafana Cloud | Sentry |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts. | $26/month for Team, the cheapest paid plan |
| Pricing model | A $19 platform fee plus metered usage, with volume discounts applied automatically rather than negotiated. The enterprise tier starts at a $25,000 annual spend commitment. | A plan fee plus five independent meters — errors, logs, application metrics, tracing spans and session replays — each with its own included amount and its own overage. Logs and metrics overflow at $0.50/GB; extra uptime alerts at $1.00 each. |
| Retention window | 13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests on Pro. The free tier is 14 days for everything. | 30-day lookback on Developer, the free plan. Up to 90 days on Team, and up to 90 days plus additional sampled retention on Business. Enterprise is custom. "Up to" is Sentry's own wording — the 90 days is a ceiling, not a guarantee. |
| Self-hostable | Supported | Limited |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Grafana Cloud: $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/))
- Sentry: $26/month for Team, the cheapest paid plan ([source](https://sentry.io/pricing/))

### Pricing model

- Grafana Cloud: A $19 platform fee plus metered usage, with volume discounts applied automatically rather than negotiated. The enterprise tier starts at a $25,000 annual spend commitment. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/))
- Sentry: A plan fee plus five independent meters — errors, logs, application metrics, tracing spans and session replays — each with its own included amount and its own overage. Logs and metrics overflow at $0.50/GB; extra uptime alerts at $1.00 each. ([source](https://sentry.io/pricing/))

### Retention window

- Grafana Cloud: 13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests on Pro. The free tier is 14 days for everything. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/))
- Sentry: 30-day lookback on Developer, the free plan. Up to 90 days on Team, and up to 90 days plus additional sampled retention on Business. Enterprise is custom. "Up to" is Sentry's own wording — the 90 days is a ceiling, not a guarantee. ([source](https://sentry.io/pricing/))

### Self-hostable

- Grafana Cloud: Supported ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/))
- Sentry: Limited ([source](https://develop.sentry.dev/self-hosted/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Grafana Cloud if Metrics-heavy monitoring where 13 months of retention matters — that window is an order of magnitude beyond what the error trackers and most telemetry platforms keep.

Pick Sentry if Teams that want tracing, logs, replays and uptime in one place and will pay per meter for it. The tooling is the deepest in the category and the SDK coverage is the widest.

Consider something else: Grafana Cloud — Logs and traces get 30 days rather than 13 months, so the headline retention figure does not describe most of what you send it.

Consider something else: Sentry — Five meters bill independently, so 50,000 errors is not 50,000 units of observability. A team watching cost needs to watch spans and logs too, not just the error count.

## Documented by only one

- When you exceed a cap: Sentry: Billed, not throttled: each meter charges for additional usage beyond the included amount, at a published per-unit rate.
- Events included: Sentry: 50,000 errors a month on Team and Business; 5,000 on Free. Errors are one meter of several — logs, spans, replays and uptime monitors are counted and billed separately.
- Session replay: Sentry: Supported
- Ingest price per GB: Grafana Cloud: From $0.050 per GB processed, falling to $0.046 above 10,000 GB and $0.044 above 25,000 with automatic volume discounts.
- SOC 2: Sentry: SOC 2 Type I and Type II certifications; report available via account or on request.
- ISO 27001: Sentry: ISO 27001 certified; certificate available via account or on request.
- HIPAA: Sentry: HIPAA attestation obtained.
- Encryption at rest: Sentry: All data encrypted at rest; keys managed via a redundant, globally distributed Key Management Service.
- Role-based access control: Sentry: Role-based access: Billing, Member, Admin, Manager, Organization Owner.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Grafana Cloud or Sentry?**

Grafana Cloud: $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts.
Sentry: $26/month for Team, the cheapest paid plan

**Should I choose Grafana Cloud or Sentry?**

Pick Grafana Cloud if Metrics-heavy monitoring where 13 months of retention matters — that window is an order of magnitude beyond what the error trackers and most telemetry platforms keep.
Pick Sentry if Teams that want tracing, logs, replays and uptime in one place and will pay per meter for it. The tooling is the deepest in the category and the SDK coverage is the widest.