1v1 Pricing Showdown
Bugsnag (SmartBear) vs Rollbar
Side-by-side pricing breakdown for Error Tracking & Exception Monitoring decision-makers
Prices in USD, verified from the United States. Regional pricing may vary.
When choosing between Bugsnag (SmartBear) and Rollbar for your error tracking & exception monitoring stack, the right answer depends on three things: your budget, the specific features you actually use day-to-day, and your tolerance for renewal-price increases. Below we lay out the prices each vendor advertises today (verified against their live pricing pages), the plan limits that decide whether they'll fit your team, and the features that differ between them.
Bugsnag (SmartBear) starts at custom pricing; Rollbar starts at custom pricing. The cheaper headline price isn't always the cheaper total cost — renewal pricing, per-user fees, and overage charges can shift the math. Use the plan-by-plan tables below to model your actual spend.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| event tracking | All plans — 50+ platforms | — |
| source maps | All plans (JavaScript, ProGuard, dSYM) | — |
| stability benchmarks | Preferred+ | — |
| automatic error prioritization | Preferred+ | — |
| symbolicated stack traces | All plans | — |
| on prem deployment | Enterprise only | — |
| retention | 7 / 60 / custom days | 30 / 90 / 180 / custom days |
| smartbear ownership | Acquired by SmartBear (2021) | — |
| consumer app focus | Strong on iOS/Android/Unity crash analytics | — |
| pricing opacity | Paid tiers quote-only since ~2024 | — |
| occurrence grouping | — | Intelligent grouping all plans |
| real time alerts | — | All plans |
| users | — | Unlimited all plans |
| rollbar analyze | — | Advanced+ — RQL query + Metrics API |
| adaptive alerts | — | Advanced+ |
| scim provisioning | — | Advanced+ |
| trial | — | 14 days, 200K occurrences + 10K sessions + 15K credits |
| overage options | — | Stop / on-demand bill / budget cap |
| billing flex | — | Monthly or annual |
Affiliate links — you pay the same price
Dive Deeper
Bugsnag (SmartBear)
About the error tracking & exception monitoring category
Error tracking in 2026 has fractured into three pricing philosophies. Errors-as-primitive (Sentry $26 Team / $80 Business + pay-as-you-go overage) and Honeybadger ($0 free / $26 Team / $80 Business) share a near-identical tier structure — 5K free, 50K Team, 50K Business with retention differences. Custom-quoted mid-market (Rollbar, Bugsnag) hid public pricing behind 'contact us' gates around 2024, a strategic retreat that makes them harder to evaluate but potentially cheaper for negotiated deals. Per-module pricing (Raygun: Crash $40/mo, RUM $80/mo, APM $80/mo — each at 100K events) lets you buy just what you need but requires multi-SKU accounting. What used to be a simple 'pick the cheapest per-error rate' decision is now about THREE questions: (1) Is this errors-only or do you want RUM/APM/logs bundled? (2) Do you want transparent self-service pricing or are you willing to do sales cycles for better enterprise deals? (3) How much retention do you need — 30/60/90/180 days? Sentry continues dominating by expanding into full observability (logs, replays, profiling, tracing) at the same price point, pressuring specialist error-only tools to justify their existence.
How to choose between error tracking & exception monitoring options
First: errors-only or full observability? If you only need errors: Honeybadger Team $26 (50K errors, 90-day retention, 5 uptime monitors) is the best pure-play deal. If you want errors + session replay + logs + performance: Sentry Team $26 bundles all of it. Second: team size and org complexity? Solo dev or small team (<5 users): Sentry Developer free (5K errors) or Honeybadger Developer free (5K errors, 1 user). Growing team (5-50 devs): Sentry Team ($26 annual) or Honeybadger Team ($26). Mid-market (50-200 devs): Sentry Business ($80 annual) or negotiated Rollbar/Bugsnag quote. Enterprise (200+ devs): Rollbar Enterprise or Bugsnag Enterprise — both lean into enterprise-sales play with procurement-friendly terms. Third: retention requirements? Sentry/Honeybadger Team give 90 days; Business gives 180 days; Rollbar Advanced gives 180 days. If you're in regulated industry needing 2+ years retention: Enterprise tier only. Fourth: language/platform coverage? All five handle the common stack (JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Node, PHP, Java, .NET). Sentry leads on edge runtimes (Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun) and game engines (Unity, Unreal). Raygun leads on native mobile (iOS, Android). Bugsnag leads on stability benchmarks and crash analytics for consumer apps. Fifth: do you also need APM, RUM, or uptime? Sentry bundles spans/replays/logs at base tiers. Raygun has dedicated RUM + APM modules (buy separately). Honeybadger bundles 5 uptime monitors on Team+. Rollbar focuses on errors only (pair with observability stack).
Building Your Business Stack?
Decision-makers comparing tools often need more than one category. Here are related comparisons:
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does Bugsnag (SmartBear) or Rollbar offer a free plan?
- Bugsnag (SmartBear) and Rollbar both offer a free plan.
- Which is better, Bugsnag (SmartBear) or Rollbar?
- Rollbar scores 8.3/10 compared to Bugsnag (SmartBear)'s 8.1/10 in our analysis. Rollbar ranks higher on features and value, but Bugsnag (SmartBear) may suit specific use cases — see the feature comparison above.
- Are there other error tracking & exception monitoring alternatives besides Bugsnag (SmartBear) and Rollbar?
- Yes. Our [Error Tracking & Exception Monitoring pricing comparison](/pricing/error-tracking/) page covers all major providers with daily-verified prices. You can also see the [cheapest error tracking & exception monitoring](/pricing/error-tracking/cheapest/) for budget-focused options.