AppSignal

Error tracking and performance monitoring that just works

Developer Tools Monitoring & Observability www.appsignal.com

Visit Website

Founded

2012

Starting Price

About AppSignal

AppSignal is an all-in-one application performance monitoring (APM) platform that combines error tracking, performance monitoring, logging, host and uptime monitoring, cron check-ins, and custom dashboards in a single tool. It is built for backend developers, with first-party instrumentation for Ruby, Elixir, Node.js, Python, and frontend JavaScript, plus OpenTelemetry support for other languages. Pricing is based on request volume rather than per-seat, so every plan includes unlimited users, teams, applications, and dashboards.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Every monitoring feature is included on every paid plan - errors, performance, logs, hosts, uptime, check-ins, and dashboards are not gated behind higher tiers
Priced on request volume with unlimited users, teams, applications, and dashboards, so adding engineers costs nothing
No overage billing: monitoring keeps running past your plan limit and an upgrade conversation only starts after you exceed it in 2 out of 3 months
Deep first-party instrumentation for Ruby/Rails, Elixir/Phoenix, Node.js, Python, and frontend JavaScript rather than generic agents, with roughly a 2-minute install
EU-based (Amsterdam) and GDPR compliant, ISO 27001 certified, with optional US data residency and HIPAA compliance add-ons
MCP server pipes production errors, traces, and deploys into Claude, Cursor, or Zed so AI assistants can draft fixes against real data
Permanent free plan with 50K requests and 1GB of logging, and free extended limits for open-source and humanitarian projects
Support is handled by AppSignal's own engineers, which reviewers consistently rate as a standout (10.0 quality-of-support score on G2)

Cons

First-party agents cover only Ruby, Elixir, Node.js, JavaScript, and Python - Go, Java, PHP, and Rust are supported through OpenTelemetry rather than purpose-built integrations
No mobile application monitoring for native iOS or Android apps
The integration catalogue is far smaller than Datadog's or New Relic's, so it is a weaker fit for teams monitoring broad infrastructure beyond their application code
Logging beyond 1GB/month is a paid add-on, and long-term log storage and HIPAA compliance each cost an extra $89-99/month on top of the plan
Request-volume pricing can be hard to forecast for chatty APIs or high-throughput services, where costs climb faster than for user-count pricing
Distributed tracing is still labelled beta, so teams needing mature end-to-end tracing across many microservices may find it thin
AppSignal is a roughly 25-person bootstrapped company, which means a smaller support and roadmap surface than the large enterprise APM vendors
The interface can feel dense once every monitoring option is enabled at the same time

Key Features

Error tracking

Captures every exception with backtrace, occurrence history, and the deploy that shipped it. Errors are grouped so you see patterns instead of noise, and can be tagged with custom data, filtered, and pushed to your issue tracker.

Performance monitoring

Tracks response times, throughput, and slow endpoints from the first deploy, with duration breakdowns, event timelines, slow query and N+1 query detection, and memory leak detection.

Log management

Full-text search and attribute filtering across all logs with saved queries, live tail streaming from every service, source and hostname management, and customizable views. Included free up to 1GB/month, paid add-on beyond that.

Trace-linked logs and log-based alerts

Jump from an error straight to the exact log lines that led to it, with timestamps already correlated. Alerts can fire on any log pattern, error string, or warning spike.

Distributed tracing (beta)

Traces requests end-to-end across services to show which call or hop is the bottleneck. Still marked BETA on the platform.

Host monitoring

Server-level metrics including CPU usage, disk I/O and usage, load average, memory and network usage, with side-by-side host comparison.

Uptime monitoring and status pages

HTTP/HTTPS uptime checks pinged from four locations, with downtime alerts, uptime metrics, and a free public status page.

Check-ins for cron jobs and background processes

One-line configuration to monitor any recurring process or cron job, with failure alerts and occurrence-level insights when a job does not report in.

Metric dashboards and custom metrics

Dashboards build themselves from default templates, and you can send arbitrary metrics from your own code. Supports custom dashboards, fullscreen mode, and easy chart sharing.

Anomaly detection and alerting

Set alerts on any metric with warmup and cooldown periods, using many built-in defaults. Alerts route to Slack, email, and other destinations and can link to related dashboards.

MCP server and AI coding integrations

An MCP server lets Claude, Cursor, or Zed query production errors, traces, and deploys directly, so an AI assistant can draft a fix or a pull request grounded in real production data.

Deploy tracking

Every deploy is marked, timestamped, and correlated with errors and performance changes so you can identify which release broke production.

Pricing

Free

$0/month

50K requests/month
1GB logging/month
5-day retention
Unlimited users, teams, applications, and dashboards
No credit card required
Extended limits available free for open-source and humanitarian projects

Paid - 250K requests

$25/month

250K requests/month
$279/year (about $23.25/month) if billed annually
All monitoring features: errors, performance, tracing, hosts, uptime, check-ins, dashboards
1GB logging/month included free
Unlimited users, teams, applications, and dashboards
30-day full-featured free trial

Paid - 1M requests

$399/year

1M requests/month
About $33.25/month effective when billed annually
All monitoring features included
1GB logging/month included free
Unlimited users, teams, and applications

Paid - 3M requests

$709/year

3M requests/month
About $59.08/month effective when billed annually
All monitoring features included
Unlimited users, teams, and applications

Paid - 10M requests

$1,669/year

10M requests/month
About $139.08/month effective when billed annually
All monitoring features included
Unlimited users, teams, and applications

Paid - 75M requests

$4,789/year

75M requests/month (top of the public pricing slider)
About $399.08/month effective when billed annually
Intermediate steps available at 15M ($2,189/yr), 20M ($2,499/yr), 25M ($2,869/yr), and 50M ($3,709/yr)
All monitoring features included
Contact sales for higher volumes

Add-ons

$89/month

Long-term log storage to S3-compatible storage: $89/month billed annually, $99/month billed monthly
HIPAA compliance: $89/month billed annually, $99/month billed monthly
Extra logging beyond the free 1GB/month: $109/year per additional 10GB/month (10GB $109/yr, 20GB $218/yr, 30GB $327/yr, 40GB $436/yr)
Enterprise SAML SSO and US data hosting available as business features
GitHub login is always free

Best For

Consolidating a multi-vendor monitoring stack

Teams running separate tools for errors, APM, and logs can replace three or four vendors with one subscription, since AppSignal bundles error tracking, performance monitoring, logging, host metrics, and uptime checks at a single price.

Rails and Phoenix teams that want framework-aware monitoring

First-party integrations understand Active Record, Sidekiq, Puma, GraphQL, Phoenix, Ecto, and Oban, surfacing slow queries and N+1 problems in terms of the framework rather than generic spans.

Small engineering teams priced out of per-seat APM

Because billing is tied to request volume and users are unlimited, a 3 to 25 engineer team can put everyone in the monitoring tool without the seat costs that make Datadog or New Relic expensive at that size.

AI-assisted production debugging

The MCP server lets Claude, Cursor, or Zed pull the actual error, trace, and deploy from production, so the AI writes a fix grounded in real telemetry instead of guessing from a stack trace pasted into chat.

Monitoring under EU data and healthcare compliance constraints

EU-hosted infrastructure with GDPR compliance and ISO 27001 certification, plus optional US data residency and a HIPAA compliance add-on, covers teams that cannot send telemetry to arbitrary regions.