Choose an error-tracking API by checking three things together: whether you can retrieve the events you need, how long your plan retains them, and what happens when event or API limits are reached. A retention window alone does not guarantee every event is saved. Sentry, Rollbar, and BugSnag document different retrieval and limit behaviors, so verify the terms for your account and plan before relying on them.
What to compare before choosing
Start with the investigation your team needs to perform. Can you query the relevant errors through an API or search them in a dashboard? Will those events still be available when an incident is investigated? And if a quota or rate limit is reached, are events rejected, rate-limited, or simply unavailable through the API?
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- Retrieval: Check the exact event data and time-range filters available, pagination behavior, authentication requirements, and any payload-size limits.
- Retention: Confirm the current plan’s window and what happens when that window expires. Treat retention as a plan term, not a universal product setting.
- Limits: Identify whether a limit applies to API calls, submitted occurrences, or the number of events saved. These affect different parts of the workflow.
How the three services differ
| Service | Event retrieval | Retention stated in vendor materials | What limits can affect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sentry | Project error-event listing endpoint with time controls, cursor pagination, and optional full payloads. | Not established by the cited Sentry sources; confirm current terms for your organization. | API request and concurrency limits can affect calls. |
| Rollbar | Pricing materials describe Analyze with RQL and a Metrics API on paid levels or as an add-on; confirm the query scope for the selected plan. | Pricing page lists maximums of 30 days for Free, 90 days for Essentials, 180 days for Advanced, and custom for Enterprise. | Configured project-token limits can cause item-submission POST calls to return HTTP 429 until the next window. |
| BugSnag | Data Access API provides organization, project, and error information; saved events can be searched and segmented in the dashboard. | Pricing page lists 7 days for Free, 60 days for some tiers, and custom for another tier; exact tier mapping should be confirmed. | Daily event quotas can be configured to rate-limit events; rate-limited events are not saved. |
Retention figures and plan capabilities above are vendor-published terms, not independent benchmarks. Rollbar’s cited pricing and documentation were retrieved on October 7, 2026; vendor pages may change.
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Sentry: useful event retrieval controls, but verify retention separately
Sentry describes its web API as a way to access the platform programmatically, manage account resources, and manage or export data. Its current public API is identified as v0, and beta endpoints may change. The project error-events endpoint accepts either a statistics period or start and end bounds, supports cursor pagination, and can return full payloads. Requests for full payloads are capped at 10 events per page. Calls require bearer authentication and one of the documented project scopes. See the Sentry project error-events API and Sentry API overview.
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Sentry also documents request-rate and concurrency limits. These govern API use rather than how long an event remains retained; responses include headers for the limit, remaining capacity, and reset. Sentry supports region-specific API domains, which it says generally reduce latency for requests to the organization’s region. Confirm the applicable domain and limits for your account in its API rate-limit documentation.
The cited Sentry sources do not establish a current retention window. Do not infer one from event-listing capability: confirm the retention terms for your organization and plan before designing an investigation workflow around older events.
Rollbar: match retention and occurrence limits to event volume
Rollbar’s pricing page lists maximum retention of 30 days for Free, 90 days for Essentials, 180 days for Advanced, and custom retention for Enterprise. Its retention documentation separately says free-plan retention is 30 days and paid-plan defaults can be up to 180 days, with available settings dependent on plan type. It also states that occurrence exception data older than the configured period is permanently deleted or redacted and becomes inaccessible. Check the current Rollbar pricing terms and Rollbar data-retention documentation for the plan you are considering.
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Retention is only one part of the decision. Rollbar’s rate-limit documentation says that once a project-token limit is reached, POST item calls return HTTP 429 until the next window. That affects submissions, not merely later retrieval. Review the configured limit and window against expected event volume using the Rollbar rate-limit guidance.
For querying, Rollbar’s current pricing material describes Analyze with RQL and a Metrics API on paid levels or as an add-on. The pricing description alone does not establish the exact query scope available to every plan, so verify that the selected tier exposes the fields, history, and access method your incident process requires.
BugSnag: distinguish reported events from events actually saved
BugSnag separates its Data Access API, which exposes information about organizations, projects, errors, and more, from its Error Reporting API, which notifies the service about errors. Its API overview describes these as distinct interfaces. For investigation, the important distinction is whether an event was saved: BugSnag says received events may be saved, rate-limited, or discarded, while saved events are available for dashboard search and segmentation. See its usage information.
BugSnag’s billing documentation defines an event as an error reported by an application and describes daily quota strategies that include capturing every event or rate limiting. Under the latter strategy, rate-limited events are not saved. This means a displayed retention duration cannot tell you whether an event that hit a quota will exist to search later. Review the BugSnag billing guidance alongside the current quota and overage settings for your account.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsBugSnag’s pricing page lists seven days of retention on Free, 60 days on some paid tiers, and custom retention on another tier. The cited page excerpt does not fully establish the tier mapping, so confirm the exact current plan before attaching a retention figure to a purchasing decision. The page also mentions a Data Export API; verify that its access and scope meet your needs on the chosen plan. See BugSnag pricing.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Turn the comparison into a practical decision
- Write down the investigation window. Specify how far back responders need to search, including delayed reports and recurring defects. Compare that window with the exact plan retention, not a vendor-wide headline.
- Test the event retrieval path. Confirm the API or dashboard can find the relevant project, error, and time range. Check pagination, payload availability, authentication scopes, and plan-level access.
- Model peak event volume against the right limit. Separate request limits from event-submission limits and daily saved-event quotas. Ask what the service does at the threshold and when capacity resets.
- Decide whether missing events are acceptable. If rate limiting or rejection can omit events needed for investigations, select settings or a plan that addresses that risk and document the trade-off for responders.
- Confirm account-specific terms. Verify plan, configured retention, region, export options, overage behavior, and applicable limit settings in current vendor documentation and contract terms.
Why retention and limits must be evaluated together
Retention answers how long stored data remains available; it does not necessarily answer whether every reported event was stored in the first place. Rollbar documents HTTP 429 responses for item submissions after configured project-token limits are reached. BugSnag documents quota strategies under which rate-limited events are not saved. Sentry’s cited limits instead govern API requests and concurrency. These behaviors are not interchangeable, so compare the failure mode that matters to your own incident response.
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