Users rarely report bugs clearly. They say the site is broken, or they say nothing and leave. Error tracking fixes this by capturing every crash and failed request automatically, with the stack trace, the affected user count, and the release that introduced it, so you fix the error that affects a hundred users before the one that affects one. For a small team, free error tracking is one of the highest-value tools you can add.

This comparison covers Sentry's hosted free tier, GlitchTip as a self-hosted Sentry-compatible option, and Highlight for teams that also want session replay.

Whichever tool you pick, start small: instrument one service, set up alerts for new error types only, and review the dashboard weekly with your team. A free plan that quietly collects errors nobody reads is no better than no tracking at all, so make triage part of your routine from day one.