---
title: "Getting Started With Sentry"
description: "Set up Sentry and configure the key features that help you find and fix problems faster."
url: https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/
---

# Getting Started With Sentry | Sentry Docs

Sentry captures errors, logs, traces, replays, profiles, and metrics from your application — and connects them all through distributed tracing. This page walks you through the steps to get the most out of Sentry **after you've [installed the SDK](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms.md)**.

**New to Sentry? → [Sign up here](https://sentry.io/signup/)** or [try the sandbox](https://sandbox.sentry.io/) to explore the product without installing anything.

**Plans and Pricing** → Sentry offers a free Developer plan and three paid plans (Team, Business, and Enterprise). Each paid plan includes a base volume per data type, and you can add more with discounted reserved volume or a pay-as-you-go budget, all billed by the amount of data you send. Sentry has a 14-day free trial with unlimited event data and access to Business plan features. At the end of the trial, you can upgrade or return to the features and quotas included with your existing plan. If no plan is selected at the end of your trial, your organization will default to the free Developer plan. [Learn more about pricing and billing](https://docs.sentry.io/pricing.md).

## [Step 1: Connect Your Source Code](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#step-1-connect-your-source-code)

Connecting your source code repository is the single most impactful setup step. It unlocks:

* **[Suspect commits](https://docs.sentry.io/product/issues/suspect-commits.md)** — Sentry identifies the most likely commit that introduced an error
* **[Seer AI debugging](https://docs.sentry.io/product/ai-in-sentry/seer.md)** — root cause analysis, [Autofix](https://docs.sentry.io/product/ai-in-sentry/seer/autofix.md) (automatic PR generation), and [AI Code Review](https://docs.sentry.io/product/ai-in-sentry/seer/code-review.md)
* **Stack trace links** — click from a stack trace directly to the line in your repo
* **Readable stack traces** — upload [source maps](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/sourcemaps.md) (JavaScript) or [debug symbols](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/native/data-management/debug-files.md) (native) for de-minified/de-obfuscated stack traces

Set up your [GitHub](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/source-code-mgmt/github.md), [GitLab](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/source-code-mgmt/gitlab.md), or [Bitbucket](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/source-code-mgmt/bitbucket.md) integration in **[Settings > Integrations](https://sentry.io/orgredirect/organizations/:orgslug/settings/integrations/)**.

## [Step 2: Set Up Alerts and Notifications](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#step-2-set-up-alerts-and-notifications)

Alerts make sure the right people know when things go wrong. Sentry supports:

* **[Alerts](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/alerts.md)** — notify on new errors, regressions, error spikes, or when thresholds like error rate, latency and crash-free session rate are crossed
* **[Uptime monitors](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/monitors/uptime-monitoring.md)** — watch your endpoints for downtime
* **[Cron monitors](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/monitors/crons.md)** — track scheduled jobs for failures or missed runs

Route alerts to [Slack](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/notification-incidents/slack.md), [Discord](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/notification-incidents/discord.md), [PagerDuty](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/notification-incidents/pagerduty.md), or your [issue tracker](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/issue-tracking.md) (Jira, Linear, GitHub Issues). See [alert best practices](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/alerts.md#alerts-best-practices) for tips on avoiding noise.

## [Step 3: Add context with connected telemetry](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#step-3-add-context-with-connected-telemetry)

After basic error monitoring, these features add the debugging context to help you find and fix problems faster. Data types that Sentry collects are connected via a common TraceID (when tracing is enabled), and can be used together for debugging issues. For example, when an error happens, spans, logs, replays, and profiling data can be used in combination to provide highly useful context for an agent or human to investigate that error.

| Feature                                                                | What it adds                                                | Set up                                                                                                          |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **[Tracing](https://docs.sentry.io/product/trace-explorer.md)**        | Follow requests across services, find slow queries and N+1s | Enable `tracesSampleRate` in SDK config                                                                         |
| **[Agent Tracing](https://docs.sentry.io/product/agents.md)**          | Trace and debug agent workflows and conversations           | [Read the instructions](https://docs.sentry.io/product/agents/getting-started.md) for your SDK                  |
| **[Logs](https://docs.sentry.io/product/logs.md)**                     | Structured logs alongside errors and traces                 | Add log calls or a logging integration — [set up guide](https://docs.sentry.io/product/logs/getting-started.md) |
| **[Session Replay](https://docs.sentry.io/product/session-replay.md)** | Video-like recordings of user sessions (web and mobile)     | Enable replay in SDK config                                                                                     |
| **[Profiling](https://docs.sentry.io/product/profiling.md)**           | CPU profiles showing which functions are slow               | Enable profiling in SDK config                                                                                  |
| **[Application Metrics](https://docs.sentry.io/product/metrics.md)**   | Custom counters, gauges, distributions                      | Add metric calls to your code                                                                                   |
| **[User Feedback](https://docs.sentry.io/product/user-feedback.md)**   | Collect bug reports from users, linked to errors            | Add the feedback widget                                                                                         |

## [Step 4: Explore Your Data](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#step-4-explore-your-data)

Once data is flowing, use these tools to understand your application's health:

* **[Dashboards](https://docs.sentry.io/product/dashboards.md)** — pre-built views for frontend, backend, mobile, and AI performance, plus custom dashboards
* **[Trace Explorer](https://docs.sentry.io/product/trace-explorer.md)** — search, filter, and aggregate span data to find performance bottlenecks
* **[Releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases.md)** — track crash-free sessions, version adoption, and regressions by deploy

## [Learn More](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#learn-more)

### [Practical Guides](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#practical-guides)

Our **[Guides](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides.md)** cover real-world patterns for each feature:

* [What to Prioritize](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides/issues-errors.md) — error handling and triage strategies
* [What to Log](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides/logs.md) — structured logging patterns
* [What to Track](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides/metrics.md) — choosing the right metrics
* [Querying Traces](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides/querying-traces.md) — finding slow pages and bottlenecks
* [Adding Custom Spans](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides/custom-spans.md) — instrumenting your own code
* [Using Session Replay](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/guides/session-replay.md) — debugging workflows with replays
* [Getting Started Tutorial](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/getting-started-tutorial.md) — follow a sample full-stack JavaScript app end-to-end

### [Cookbook](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#cookbook)

The **[Sentry Cookbook](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started/cookbook.md)** has step-by-step recipes for common workflows, including debugging with MCP + Cursor, setting up AI observability, creating dashboards with agents, and more. Full recipes live on [sentry.io/cookbook](https://sentry.io/cookbook/).

### [Interactive Resources](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#interactive-resources)

* **[Sandbox](https://sandbox.sentry.io/)** — explore Sentry with pre-populated sample data

### [Tutorials](https://docs.sentry.io/get-started.md#tutorials)

Follow along with a sample app to set up error monitoring or distributed tracing end-to-end:

* #### [Getting Started Tutorial](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/getting-started-tutorial.md)

  Follow this step-by-step tutorial to set up Sentry error monitoring and distributed tracing for a sample fullstack JavaScript app. You'll learn how to trace errors from your frontend through to your backend, see readable stack traces, and pinpoint the commit that caused them.

* #### [Performance Monitoring](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/performance-monitoring.md)

  Track application performance across your full stack with distributed tracing, automated issue detection, and pre-built dashboards.

* #### [User Feedback Basics](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/user-feedback-basics.md)

  Learn how to configure and deploy Sentry's User Feedback widget to capture qualitative insights from your users.

## Pages in this section

- [Getting Started Tutorial](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/getting-started-tutorial.md)
- [Performance Monitoring](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/performance-monitoring.md)
- [User Feedback Basics](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/user-feedback-basics.md)