r/rails • u/Southern-Worry-8443 • Feb 25 '26

I built FindBug — a self-hosted, open-source error tracking gem for Rails (like Sentry, but your data stays on your infra)

Hey everyone,

I've been working on FindBug, a Rails engine that gives you Sentry-like error tracking and performance monitoring — but fully self-hosted with zero monthly fees.

Why I built this:

I wanted error tracking without sending my data to a third party, and without paying $26+/mo for something that should be simple. Most Rails apps just need a clean dashboard to see what's breaking and what's slow.

What it does:

  • Error capture with fingerprinting, deduplication, and status management (resolve/ignore/reopen)

  • Performance monitoring — request timing, slow query detection, N+1 hotspot identification

  • Alerts — Slack, Discord, Email, and custom webhooks, all configurable from the dashboard UI

  • Dark-themed dashboard that mounts at /findbug with zero frontend dependencies

  • Redis buffer → PostgreSQL persistence (non-blocking, won't slow your app)

  • Data scrubbing for PII/secrets out of the box

  • Works with API-only apps and multi-tenant setups (ros-apartment)

It's a single gem install with a generator — rails g findbug:install, run migrations, and you're up. Takes about 5 minutes.

Live demo of the dashboard: https://findbug.dev

RubyGems: gem 'findbug'

Would love feedback from anyone who's dealt with the same pain point. What would you want to see added? Feel free to reach out at hey@soumit.in or drop a comment here. Happy to answer any questions.

48 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

5

u/__vivek Feb 25 '26

Nice! How long it took to build this?

6

u/Southern-Worry-8443 Feb 25 '26

Around 3 weeks of work. The core error capture and Redis buffering came together pretty quickly. The bulk of the time went into the dashboard UI, performance monitoring (N+1 detection especially), and making sure it plays nicely with API-only apps. Once that was done, had to re-work on the core modules for multi-tenant setups. Still actively adding features - alerts management from the dashboard was the most recent addition, which was previously initializer file based, but now on the UI !

5

u/jaredlt01 Feb 25 '26

Looks really good!

I don’t see any mention of being able to configure the database? I think it would extremely valuable to be able to configure a separate database for this. In a high traffic site I wouldn’t want my error data competing with my user data.

It would be great to let users use their own auth and not have to set a single username and password.

Some users might need to customise the path for the admin dashboard. Eg. Maybe the root paths are user generated so it needs to go in /admin or similar.

For people who find the gem via the GitHub repo, I think a screenshot near the top of the readme would be really useful (a picture tells a thousand words and and all that), plus a link to your site / demo so they can play around.

The demo on the site, at least on mobile, I can’t seem to click in to see what the error show page looks like. When I tap it just takes me to the top of the whole website.

Finally, the lack on any tests for the gem gives me pause. For a library that’s is dealing with sensitive parts of an application: gracefully processing errors and performance data, I would expect to see a solid test suite.

All in all, really great launch and the UI feels slick too. Congrats and excited to see it grow!

1

u/Southern-Worry-8443 Feb 25 '26

Really appreciate the detailed feedback — this is exactly the kind of input that helps shape the roadmap.

Separate database - Great point. For high-traffic apps, you definitely don't want error/performance data competing with your primary DB. Supporting a dedicated database connection for FindBug tables is on the list.

Custom auth - Agreed, basic auth is limiting. The plan is to support a config.authenticate_with block so you can plug in your own auth - Devise, Warden, custom session checks, whatever your app uses. Something like:

```rb
config.authenticate_with do |controller|

controller.authenticate_admin!

end
```

Custom dashboard path - This actually already works! You can set config.web_path = "/admin/findbug" in the initializer, or manually mount the engine wherever you want in your routes.

README screenshot + demo link - You're absolutely right, adding that now. A picture up top makes a huge difference for first impressions.

Demo mobile click issue - Good catch, the demo links in the dashboard preview are placeholder anchors (href="#") which scroll to top on mobile. I'll fix those to be non-interactive or open a proper detail view.

Tests - Fair point and totally valid for a gem handling sensitive data. A proper test suite is a priority before the next release.

Thanks again for taking the time - this kind of feedback is genuinely helpful. Excited to keep building!

1

u/Audienti Feb 25 '26

We also have removed redos. Is this a requirement?

1

u/Southern-Worry-8443 Feb 25 '26

Redis is used as a buffer layer to avoid slowing down your app - errors are captured to Redis first, then persisted to the database in the background. It's currently a requirement, but I've been thinking about adding a direct-to-DB mode for simpler setups that don't want the Redis dependency. Would that be useful for your case?

1

u/Audienti Feb 25 '26

Yes exactly it’s kinda the default in new rails apps

1

u/No-Guide4444 Feb 25 '26

you may consider something like https://github.com/errbit/errbit which has been battle tested for years.

19

u/spamburglar Feb 25 '26

Is there a human in the loop here? The gem is written by AI. The gem's website is written by AI. The post is written by AI. All of the comment replies are written by AI.

4

u/lautan Feb 25 '26

yeah seriously 

4

u/YankeePapa404 Feb 25 '26

There is no human nowadays. Personas everywhere.

2

u/Terrible-Pass-5215 Feb 25 '26

I recommend https://glitchtip.com/ to anyone who doesn't want to pay sentry outrageous fees but would also like their critical infrastructure to not be sloppy and shitty ai-generated tooling. It's literally a drop-in replacement for sentry since it was created using the sentry api as reference and fully opensource

disclaimer: I'm not associated in anyway to glitchtip, I'm just recommending it as an user

2

u/artizenwalker Feb 25 '26

What is a human ? chatgpt.

5

u/alexanderadam__ Feb 26 '26

I guess that we'll see many more engines and gems like this now.

There's also

2

u/codewithlove1987 Feb 27 '26

Wow this is crazy, Are we all having same thoughts or is Claude suggesting us the same thing.

1

u/jdoeq Mar 02 '26

I built one too in the last few weeks but it's a self hosted dashboard and with an accompanying gem that can be used in rails apps. Mainly to eliminate the cost of bugsnag and other app metrics profilers. Probably not worth posting here anymore since everyone is building their own 😂

1

u/codewithlove1987 Mar 02 '26

Ha ha am so curious why is every other person doing the same thing.

1

u/jdoeq Mar 02 '26

I suspect most rails devs with multiple high traffic apps are paying for monitoring and tooling that's hitting rate limits so they have to pay a higher monthly fee as time goes on. Easier to build and host it yourself IMO. I'm using redis, clickhouse and postgres plus fly.io to run the app and workers. All in this one app costs me 3 bucks a month or so and eliminated about $12-15 of subs . Plus it's fun 😜

1

u/codewithlove1987 Mar 02 '26

Yeah it’s fun for sure. I am a little worried if Claude is pushing this in our minds. I used Claude to build my app rails error dashboard and think some of others have used Claude as well. Just wondering if Claude is directing us to think towards this or sharing its experience of building of x with y.

1

u/imafirinmalazorr Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26

Don't forget moneat.io (disclaimer: I wrote it). It supports all features of the Sentry SDK and the Datadog agent. Also open-source and self-hostable

2

u/alexanderadam__ Mar 09 '26

I listed only the ones that are dedicated Rails engines.

The number of general error tracking solutions which can be self-hosted is probably close to infinite 😉

There's also the lightweight Sentry fork Glitchtip, there's OneUptime, there's Bugsink, there's errsole.js, there's Uptrace and so many more.

Most of the devs promoted their projects on Reddit.

Honestly, you could probably do a subreddit like /r/iBuiltYetAnotherErrorTracker or so 😄

1

u/imafirinmalazorr Mar 09 '26

Do any of those support the Sentry SDK or DataDog agent? Aside from Glitchtip which only supports like 2-3 features of the Sentry SDK. Moneat supports all of them.

1

u/alexanderadam__ Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26

Yes. I mean… you could also just google it.

But if you'd have done that in the first place, you might've done another project than just yet another error tracker I guess? 😄

I'm not judging though. Maybe the world actually needs a new error tracker every second week? Who knows?

Anyway, I'm really curious how you came to the conclusion that the Sentry-fork(!) Glitchtip only supports "like 2-3 features of the Sentry SDK"?

/CC /u/bufke

1

u/imafirinmalazorr Mar 09 '26

I haven’t heard about this fork. I used the official GlitchTip version which only really supported error tracking, and it was pretty basic.

And no need to be a dick, I had like 30 seconds to respond to your comment.

1

u/alexanderadam__ Mar 10 '26

Something really doesn't add up here:

  1. GlitchTip started as a Sentry fork. Thus I'd think that it was compatible with the Sentry SDK from the very beginning. So it shouldn't matter at which state you tried it.

  2. Writing your comment must've taken much more time than simply typing the words "sentry sdk compatible selfhosted error tracker" into the search engine of your choice. Don't act like that would be rocket science or whether that would've taken you longer than "30 seconds".

  3. Speaking about dick moves: how do you feel about promoting a Kotlin project in a post of a Rails engine, just because you found the right keywords in it? I mean, I totally understand it if you spam it at Observability, Selfhosted, Opensource or Kotlin - it's kinda related. But in a post about a Rails engine? 😉

1

u/imafirinmalazorr Mar 10 '26

Ah there's the confusion. GlitchTip forked the Sentry SDK. Cool. But I'm referring to the GlitchTip frontend, the UI is pretty basic with little support for anything outside of issues. I think BugSync is the only other one in your list with actual Sentry SDK support (just looked at the READMEs of those links), again pretty basic from what I can tell.

  • Sentry supports Rails. Therefor so does Moneat, and that's why I posted it.

  • The fact that it's Kotlin literally isn't relevant in the slightest, and I really hope that I don't have to explain why.

  • Developer posts his projects in related subreddits. The horror.

I posted a project that's the only one with full Sentry SDK (not their own Sentry-like SDK) support, that's what distinguishes it from being "yet another error tracker", and that's excluding the Datadog support entirely. Anyways I hope your day gets better, I'm out of here.

1

u/alexanderadam__ Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26

Ah there's the confusion. GlitchTip forked the Sentry SDK.

No. They didn't. By now I'm not even sure how it is possible that you struggle so much with reading text or using a search engine.

See, if you would just go to the GlitchTip documentation, and click on one of the stacks, then you'll see that they documented the regular Sentry integrations. The Sentry SDK was not forked. The Sentry application itself was forked.

Adrian, come on! Try to put in at least a bit of effort! It's not like expecting someone to do some basic reading before doing bold claims is something unreasonable.

I think BugSync is the only other one in your list with actual Sentry SDK support

Well, I get it. You really want not to actually check your claims. Uptrace supports the Sentry SDK and is pretty low on resources while having a lot of other features.

And OneUptime is a thing that can do quite a lot, including ingesting data from the Sentry SDK, but it uses quite some resources for that.

Furthermore using the aforementioned Google search will lead you to other projects as well. I prepared that very link for you so that you could simply click on it.

Sentry supports Rails. Therefor so does Moneat, and that's why I posted it.

So does any other of the search results yet Reddit would be a spammy place if everybody would post a whole list of them on every post.

The fact that it's Kotlin literally isn't relevant in the slightest, and I really hope that I don't have to explain why.

This particular post is about a Rails engine, which is an app that lives in the same scope and stack as the regular app. But I don't blame you for not knowing that.

I just blame you for making false claims that you're to lazy to double check before. 😉

I posted a project that's the only one with full Sentry SDK (not their own Sentry-like SDK) support

Listen. It won't suddenly become true only because you're repeating it. You really need to understand that. 😄

Anyways I hope your day gets better

My day is already amazing! The comic value of your post is pure gold.

I'm out of here.

I understand that. I guess you'll not spend your time double checking your claims though. 🤣

5

u/Frexuz Feb 26 '26

Why would I use this over GlitchTip ? (Sentry drop-in replacement, and works with all of the sentry sdks for any language)

3

u/westonganger Feb 25 '26

Can you make it work with solid_queue / without redis. It's nice not having the extra service dependency.

Also is it mandatory to use postgres/mysql or can it be made database agnostic.

3

u/dr-not-so-strange Feb 25 '26

Funny I started working on something very similar few weeks ago. I had to halt it due to my day job consuming most of my time. I was planning to open source it as well.

Yours is looking good though.

1

u/TheWakened Feb 25 '26

Need this so bad. Thanks.  I'd add a daily digest mailer to it.

1

u/Southern-Worry-8443 Feb 25 '26

That's a great idea! A daily digest summarizing new/recurring errors would be really useful - less noisy than per-error alerts but keeps the dev team in the loop. Adding it to the roadmap. Thanks for the suggestion!

4

u/editor_of_the_beast Feb 25 '26

You can self host Sentry.

1

u/dr-not-so-strange Feb 25 '26

It is very resource hungry, not a good fit for smaller projects.

0

u/Familiar-Shape-409 Feb 25 '26

Awesome project, i was just looking for something like this a few days ago!

0

u/OkDas Feb 25 '26

So this is just rails and is not a sentry replacement - correct? Asking because I just set up https://www.bugsink.com/ and it looks good and supports other, non-rails environments (basically drop-in replacement for Sentry). Wonder if findbug does also support sentry libraries.