Raygun

Provider Overview

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand, Raygun is a leading application performance monitoring platform from the Southern Hemisphere. Raygun offers three core products—Crash Reporting, Application Performance Monitoring (APM), and Real User Monitoring (RUM)—integrated into a single unified platform, making it one of the few monitoring providers that combines all three capabilities.

Raygun serves over 10,000 customers worldwide, including major airlines and large e-commerce platforms in the United States. Founder and CEO John-Daniel Trask is a prominent figure in New Zealand's tech scene, and Raygun stands as one of the country's most representative SaaS enterprises. Unlike most Silicon Valley-based monitoring competitors, Raygun differentiates through its unique geographic positioning and full-stack monitoring capabilities.

Core Strengths

• Crash Reporting + APM + RUM All-in-One: A single platform providing error and crash capture, transaction-level performance tracing, and real user interaction recording—no need to integrate multiple tools. Cross-data analysis pinpoints exactly "which error affected which users on which page and how long it took."
• Deep Real User Monitoring: RUM captures not only page load performance (LCP, FID, CLS Core Web Vitals) but also user clicks, scrolling, and form interactions. When linked with crash reports, teams can replay the user action path leading to errors.
• AI-Powered Alerts & Diagnostics: Anomaly detection automatically identifies performance degradation trends before users complain. Each error event includes complete request headers, device information, browser version, and custom metadata to reduce investigation time.
• Deploy Impact Analysis: Automatically correlates CI/CD deployment events with error and performance metric changes. Within 15 minutes of a new release, teams can assess stability and performance impact for rapid rollback decisions.

Product Ecosystem

Crash Reporting

Raygun's flagship product, capturing and aggregating application exceptions in real time. Supports iOS (Swift/ObjC), Android (Java/Kotlin), .NET, JavaScript, and React Native. Each crash automatically includes full stack trace, device information, OS version, and user action sequence. Intelligent grouping algorithms deduplicate similar errors automatically.

APM Performance Monitoring

Distributed transaction tracing and code-level performance analysis. Supports .NET, Java, Node.js, and Python backend languages, automatically tracking HTTP requests, database queries, external service calls, and cache operation latency. Transaction snapshots provide complete call chains for each request.

Real User Monitoring (RUM)

Records the complete user journey from page load to interaction. Automatically collects Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS), analyzes page resource loading, JavaScript execution, Ajax requests, and user interaction events. Provides multi-dimensional filtering by browser, device, and geographic location.

Deploy Tracking

Automatically records version release events through CI/CD tool integration. Each deployment comes with an independent stability report comparing error rates and performance metrics before and after deployment. Supports rollback marking and version-to-version difference analysis.

Limitations

• High Entry Barrier: No permanent free tier; the 14-day trial requires purchasing a paid plan ($149/month), making it costly for individual developers and small teams compared to Sentry's generous free tier.
• No Self-Hosted Option: Raygun is fully SaaS-based with no self-hosted or private deployment options, making it unsuitable for industries with strict data sovereignty requirements.
• Smaller Ecosystem: Compared to Sentry and Rollbar, Raygun has fewer community contributions, third-party integrations, and publicly available documentation.
• Limited Language SDK Coverage: While covering mainstream platforms, support for emerging languages (Rust, Go, Flutter) lags behind competitors in both timeliness and update frequency.

Use Cases

• Full-Stack Performance Optimization (★★★★★): Crash Reporting + APM + RUM all-in-one platform, ideal for teams wanting a unified monitoring stack.
• UX-Focused Web Applications (★★★★): RUM provides Core Web Vitals and user interaction analysis, suitable for SEO-sensitive sites.
• ANZ/Asia-Pacific Teams (★★★★★): New Zealand-based provider with local timezone alignment, low latency, and strong local support.
• Budget-Conscious Individuals/Small Teams (★★): $149/month starting price is high; consider Sentry's free tier or open-source alternatives first.

Pricing

Note: All plans are usage-based with overage charges beyond quota. 14-day free trial available.

FAQ

• What's the main difference between Raygun and Sentry? Raygun offers Crash Reporting, APM, and RUM as an integrated platform, while Sentry focuses more on error tracking + APM. Raygun's RUM module is its key differentiator. Sentry's advantages lie in its open-source ecosystem, free tier, and broader SDK support.
• How does Raygun's RUM help with SEO? RUM automatically collects Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS), which are Google search ranking factors. Teams can use RUM data to identify performance bottlenecks and optimize for better search rankings and user experience.
• Which programming languages does Raygun support? Frontend: JavaScript, React, Angular, Vue. Backend: .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby. Mobile: iOS (Swift/ObjC), Android (Java/Kotlin), React Native, Xamarin.
• Where is Raygun's data stored? Raygun uses AWS infrastructure with default data storage in the US (us-east-1). Enterprise plans may negotiate data residency, but self-hosted deployment is not available.
• Is Raygun suitable for small teams? The $149/month starting price is relatively high for small teams and startups. Consider Sentry's free tier first and migrate to Raygun as your business grows.

API & Integration

• REST API: Complete error data query, project management, and user management APIs
• Event Push API: Send error events from custom environments
• Webhook: Real-time alert push with customizable callback URLs
• Deep Integrations: Slack, PagerDuty, Jira, GitHub, and more
• CI/CD Integration: GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, TeamCity
• Official SDKs: .NET, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, iOS, Android, React Native

Competitor Comparison