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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Sentry Has a Free API — Error Tracking and Performance Monitoring for Every Stack

#webdev #monitoring #javascript #devops

What if every error in production came with a full stack trace, breadcrumbs of user actions, and a link to the exact commit that caused it?

Sentry is an error tracking and performance monitoring platform used by 100K+ organizations.

Why Sentry

  • Real-time errors — instant notifications with full context
  • Stack traces — with source maps, even in minified production code
  • Breadcrumbs — see what the user did before the crash
  • Release tracking — link errors to specific deployments
  • Performance — trace slow transactions and database queries
  • Session replay — watch what the user saw when the error occurred
  • Every platform — JavaScript, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, .NET, PHP, mobile
  • Free tier — 5K errors/month, 10K transactions, 1 user

Quick Start 

npm install @sentry/nextjs
npx @sentry/wizard@latest -i nextjs
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// That's it — Sentry auto-instruments your Next.js app
// Errors, performance, and session replay are captured automatically
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Manual Error Capture 

import * as Sentry from "@sentry/nextjs";

try {
  await processPayment(order);
} catch (error) {
  Sentry.captureException(error, {
    tags: { component: "payment" },
    extra: { orderId: order.id, amount: order.total },
  });
  throw error;
}
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Performance Monitoring 

const transaction = Sentry.startTransaction({ name: "process-order" });

const dbSpan = transaction.startChild({ op: "db.query", description: "SELECT order" });
const order = await db.orders.findById(id);
dbSpan.finish();

const paySpan = transaction.startChild({ op: "http.client", description: "Stripe charge" });
await stripe.charges.create({ amount: order.total });
paySpan.finish();

transaction.finish();
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Real Use Case

A SaaS had users reporting "it's broken" with no details. The team spent hours reproducing issues. After adding Sentry, every error included: the user's browser, the exact API call that failed, the database query that timed out, and a session replay showing what the user clicked. Average bug fix time dropped from 4 hours to 30 minutes.

When to Use Sentry

  • Any production application (web, mobile, backend)
  • Teams tired of "it works on my machine" debugging
  • Performance optimization and bottleneck identification
  • Compliance and error SLA tracking

Get Started

Visit sentry.io — free tier, works with every language and framework.

Need custom data pipelines or scraping solutions? Check out my Apify actors or email me at spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

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