When comparing Kafka vs Sentry, the Slant community recommends Sentry for most people. In the question“What are the best log management, aggregation & monitoring tools?” Sentry is ranked 2nd while Kafka is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Sentry is:
It's what Sentry calls [Rollups](https://docs.sentry.io/learn/rollups/]. All individual issues rolled-up can still be drilled down. Also two issues can be **merged** manually.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Optimized for performance
Kafka is optimized for supporting a huge number of users.
Pro Native mirroring support
Kafka has native support for mirroring.
Pro Native compression support
Kafka has native support for compression.
Pro Consolidates similar errors and makes resolution easy
It's what Sentry calls [Rollups](https://docs.sentry.io/learn/rollups/]. All individual issues rolled-up can still be drilled down. Also two issues can be merged manually.
Pro Email/Slack/GitHub/Hipchat integration
Newly discovered issues (i.e. one that isn't rolled-up under and existing one) can generate an instant notification via many means.
Pro Has an official Docker image
Sentry has an official Docker image which means it's likely going to be well reviewed and maintained for a while and it makes it easy to set up.
Pro Completely open source, with a hosted version available
Sentry is a completely open source tool. It's free to use if you want to run it on your own. If you want to avoid the overhead of running and maintaining another server, it also has a hosted version available at www.getsentry.com
Pro Source maps support
Has support for source maps.
Pro Can create projects and teams
A single Sentry server can be used for various teams/products.
Cons
Con Java is a resource hog
Java is a resource hog, making this far too slow unless you have money to throw at multiple servers with 1/2TB of ram.
Con Need Zookeeper
Kafka can only work with Zookeeper
Con Not really a logging solution
Sentry collects exceptions, it's not a solution for log aggregation.
Con Can't filter by browser versions
Sentry only filters by browser names and not by browser versions (for example: Firefox, instead of Firefox 27, Firefox 28 etc...)
Con No free cloud hosting
Unfortunately there is no free plan for cloud hosted solution. Only self-hosted solutions are free to use.