Bugsink

What is Bugsink?

Bugsink is a self-hosted error tracking tool that shows you when your code fails in production and why. It captures exceptions from your applications, groups related errors into single issues, and alerts you — all from one container you run yourself. It speaks the Sentry SDK protocol, so most apps connect by changing a single DSN URL.

What is Bugsink best for?

Teams and solo developers who want production error tracking without per-event SaaS pricing or sending stack traces (which can contain user data) to a third party. It suits people who found Sentry’s self-hosted stack too heavy and want something that installs in minutes and runs on a small server.

What can Bugsink do?

• Capture exceptions with full stack traces, surrounding code context, and local variable values
• Group related errors into a single issue automatically, so one bug isn’t 10,000 alerts
• Accept events from any Sentry SDK — Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Java, and more — with no code rewrite
• Filter and search issues by release, environment, user, and tags
• Un-minify JavaScript stack traces with source map support
• Alert your team by email and chat tools when new issues appear
• Run the entire product as a single Docker container backed by SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL

Where does Bugsink fall short?

Bugsink is deliberately narrow: it does error tracking only. It has no performance monitoring, tracing, session replay, or dashboards — if you want those alongside errors, Sentry or a broader observability stack fits better. It also lags Sentry on SDK breadth and advanced features like release health, so a few niche integrations may need extra wiring. Its single-container design keeps setup simple but means very high event volumes require vertical scaling rather than a distributed cluster.

Is Bugsink free?

Yes for self-hosting. Under the PolyForm Shield license you can run Bugsink on your own servers for free with unlimited users, unlimited events, and every feature — you pay only for your own hardware. Bugsink also offers a hosted cloud service with a free tier (15K events/month, single user) and paid plans from €16/month for 75K events and unlimited users up to higher-volume tiers.

What does Bugsink replace?

Bugsink is a self-hosted stand-in for hosted crash-reporting services like Bugsnag, Rollbar, and Raygun, as well as Sentry’s cloud. Because it’s Sentry SDK compatible, it’s also a drop-in target for apps already instrumented with Sentry. If you want a similar self-hosted, Sentry-compatible option, GlitchTip is a close comparison.

FAQ

Is Bugsink open source? Not in the strict OSI sense. Bugsink is source-available under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0 — you can read, run, and modify the code freely, but you can’t repackage it as a competing hosted error-tracking service. For most self-hosting teams this behaves like open source.

Can I self-host Bugsink for free? Yes. Self-hosting is free and unlimited under the PolyForm Shield license — all features, unlimited users, and unlimited events, capped only by your server’s capacity.

Is Bugsink a good Sentry alternative? For error tracking specifically, yes — it accepts Sentry SDK events and is far lighter to run. But it doesn’t cover Sentry’s performance monitoring, tracing, or session replay, so it’s a better fit if errors are all you need.

What do I need to run Bugsink? A Docker host and a database (SQLite works for small setups; MySQL or PostgreSQL for production). It’s modest on resources — the project reports handling around 18 events per second on 2 vCPUs and 4 GB of RAM, and it runs on ARM.