Honeybadger is $49/mo (Small). Seismograph is a self-hosted alternative at $0.99/mo. Here's when each makes sense.
| Seismograph | Honeybadger | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted, your infra | Managed SaaS (cloud only) |
| Data location | Your server, your disk | Honeybadger's cloud |
| Free tier | 5,000 errors/mo | Paid only |
| Pro pricing | $0.99/mo | $49/mo (Small) |
| Dependencies | None (single binary + SQLite) | N/A (managed) |
| Setup time | ~30 seconds | Account signup |
| Dashboard | Built-in at /ui | Cloud dashboard |
| License | BSL 1.1 | Proprietary SaaS |
Seismograph is a single Go binary with embedded SQLite. Install it with one command, and you are running in under a minute. Your data stays on your server.
curl -fsSL https://stockyard.dev/seismograph/install.sh | sh
The decision between Seismograph and Honeybadger usually comes down to one question: do you need the breadth of features that Honeybadger offers, or would a focused tool that stays out of your way be a better fit? Honeybadger has spent years building an ecosystem around error tracker. Seismograph does one thing well and gives you complete control of the underlying data.
Architecturally, Seismograph and Honeybadger could not be more different. Honeybadger runs on distributed cloud infrastructure with load balancers, managed databases, CDNs, and redundancy across availability zones. Seismograph is a single process writing to a single file on a single disk. That sounds fragile until you realize that SQLite handles more concurrent readers than most web applications will ever need, and WAL mode means reads never block writes.
Switching from Honeybadger to Seismograph is straightforward for most teams. Export your data from Honeybadger (most services offer CSV or JSON export), then POST each record to Seismograph's API. A migration script that reads the export and writes to /api/ endpoints typically takes less than 50 lines of code. The reverse migration is equally simple — Seismograph's SQLite database is a standard file you can query with any SQLite client.
Single binary. Free to start. $0.99/mo for Pro.