IBM Instana Observability vs Sentry comparison

IBM and Sentry are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. IBM is ranked #39 with an average rating of 8.0, while Sentry is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 0.8% mindshare in APM, compared to Sentry’s 5.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sentry users who would recommend it.

IBM Instana Observability

Read 3 IBM Instana Observability reviews

954 Views
935 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Sentry

Read 14 Sentry reviews

8,956 Views
8,419 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Instana Observability

Sentry

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

Sentry and IBM Instana Observability are products competing in the observability space. Sentry stands out in pricing and ease, while IBM Instana Observability leads with a feature-rich offering for complex setups.

Features: Sentry is effective for small to medium projects with rapid error detection, simple setup, and focused logging. IBM Instana Observability is suitable for complex environments offering advanced APM, real-time streaming analytics, and automated root cause analysis.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Instana Observability's cloud-based deployment supports seamless integration across various IT infrastructures, complemented by strong customer support. Sentry offers a straightforward deployment approach that fits smaller teams, providing reliable but less extensive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Sentry provides an economical pricing model with a low initial cost, facilitating quick ROI, beneficial for startups. IBM Instana Observability involves a higher upfront cost but gives substantial ROI with features designed for large enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Instana Observability vs. Sentry Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Instana Observability vs. Sentry

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Instana Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

39th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Sentry

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

11th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Debugging (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentry is 5.8%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Sentry	5.8%
IBM Instana Observability	0.8%
Other	93.4%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Tomas Kim

Managing Director at BA Solutions

Not expensive and offers good performance

The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.

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Abdullah Baig

Software Dev at AF AB

An easy-to-use solution that has a good dashboard, performs well, and provides flexible pricing

Sentry was easy to learn compared to New Relic and Azure Monitor. I saw some valuable input. It took us the least amount of time to see how Sentry is valuable. It took just a few minutes. Session Replay provides a replay of the recorded errors. It is a good feature. Azure Monitor does not have this feature. The error reporting is straightforward. We can see everything that we need to see. The dashboard seems pretty fine. The product performs well. We can see the user's IP addresses.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."

"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

"Sentry is a pretty stable product... Sentry's documentation is pretty straightforward and neat."

"Sentry's performance monitoring has helped us understand where the bottlenecks are in our application and allowed us to optimize critical transactions for a faster user experience."

"Sentry breaks everything down in real time."

"It's a great visibility tool for the developer team."

"The stability is very good for Sentry and in general works well."

"The implementation is easy. After one or two days, I can learn and use it. It's not too hard."

"I would rate the stability of Sentry as eight out of ten."

"Sentry's performance monitoring has helped us understand where the bottlenecks are in our application and allowed us to optimize critical transactions for a faster user experience."

More Sentry pros

Cons

"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."

"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."

"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."

"One area where I think Sentry can improve is in the granularity of its alerting system, as it sometimes feels too sensitive or not customizable enough."

"Additional personalization and easier setup for capturing all the different application logs could be an area of improvement."

"It should be easier to integrate Sentry with other tools, and the end-to-end tracing capabilities could be improved."

"The log centralization and analysis could be improved in Sentry."

"Lacks user metric tracking and the ability to create more dashboards."

"I would like to have alert policies and alert conditions enhanced in the next release."

"We cannot restrict particular columns on particular data. It would be helpful if that feature was improved."

More Sentry cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."

"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."

"Currently, we are in the production phase of our project and we are on free plans to use Sentry. Once we go live we will have to be on a subscription-based plan."

"We are currently paying through Cloudera for the Sentry service."

"We can adjust the price a little bit based on our needs."

"I am currently using a self-hosted open version."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?

The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?

The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...

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What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?

Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...

See all answers

What do you like most about Sentry?

The product performs well.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sentry?

Do you know anything about the pricing aspect, the licensing costs, setup cost of Sentry product?

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sentry?

What would you like to see improved or enhanced in Sentry in the future? Are there any specific features that you would like to see included in the next releases of Sentry?

See all answers

Comparisons

Elastic Observability vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 23% of the time

Grafana vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 14% of the time

Dynatrace vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 10% of the time

More IBM Instana Observability Competitors

Grafana vs Sentry

Compared 19% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Sentry

Compared 11% of the time

OpenTelemetry vs Sentry

Compared 11% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Sentry

Compared 9% of the time

AWS X-Ray vs Sentry

Compared 8% of the time

More Sentry Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

September 2025

Download IBM Instana Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

September 2025

Download Sentry product report

Overview

IBM Instana Observability offers real-time application monitoring and management, designed for automation and intelligence on modern cloud-based environments.

IBM Instana Observability provides deep visibility into application performance, empowering businesses with automated root cause analysis and intelligent alerts to optimize cloud-native applications. It captures and visualizes comprehensive health metrics to enhance operational efficiency across distributed systems, making it an invaluable tool for IT and DevOps teams seeking to improve application reliability and performance.

What are the key features of IBM Instana Observability?

Automatic Discovery: Identifies application components and dependencies without manual configuration.
Real-Time Monitoring: Delivers live data for instant visibility across application metrics.
AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis: Quickly pinpoints issues to reduce downtime and enhance user experience.
Intelligent Alerts: Provides actionable insights, minimizing false alarms.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with popular DevOps tools.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating IBM Instana Observability?

Increased Productivity: Reduces manual monitoring efforts, enhancing team efficiency.
Enhanced Performance: Improves application responsiveness and user satisfaction.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resource allocation, leading to reduced operational costs.
Scalable Solutions: Adapts to growing business needs, ensuring long-term value.
Detailed Insights: Offers granularity in monitoring, aiding in swift decision-making.

IBM Instana Observability is widely adopted across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, addressing specific challenges in each sector. In finance, it helps manage high-volume transactions with minimal latency. Healthcare benefits from its compliance support and reliable data monitoring. Retail industries utilize it for maintaining seamless customer interactions and operational uptime, ensuring business continuity and customer satisfaction.

IBM

Sentry is a robust error management system known for real-time error tracking and integration with tools like Slack, GitLab, and Jira, benefiting those seeking comprehensive application performance insights.

Sentry offers a seamless platform to monitor errors in both front-end and back-end applications, providing real-time alerts and comprehensive event log context. With its integration capabilities, teams effectively track application metrics and access performance data without direct production access, ensuring enhanced reliability. Sentry's features such as event grouping and code trace logs linked to Git repositories highlight its utility in maintaining application efficiency. Enhanced security and regular updates make it a preferred choice over competitors. Despite some requests for improvements in automation and UI enhancements, Sentry remains invaluable for error management and application performance monitoring.

What are the key features of Sentry?

Integration capabilities: Connects with Slack, GitLab, Jira, AWS Lambda.
Real-time error tracking: Alerts users instantly about errors.
Event grouping: Groups related errors for easier management.
Code trace logs: Provides detailed trace logs linked to Git repositories.
Comprehensive context: Offers a complete view of events and context.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from Sentry?

Enhanced reliability: Provides critical insights for robust application performance.
Accessibility: Easy deployment and quick adaptation make it user-friendly.
Security: Maintains high security standards with timely updates.
Utility in error management: Detects silent failures, aiding ETL processes.
Cost efficiency: Favored over alternatives like New Relic due to comprehensive features.

In industries like technology, Sentry is crucial for monitoring errors in web applications, offering real-time alerts and performance tracking. It is frequently used in ETL processes to detect failures without direct developer access, benefiting teams who manage large-scale applications and databases efficiently.

Sentry

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, Uber

Buyer's Guide

IBM Instana Observability vs. Sentry

September 2025

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