| Product | Highlight.io |
| Website | highlight.io |
| Category | Observability / Session Replay |
| Features | Session replay, error monitoring, logging, tracing |
| Pricing | Free tier, usage-based after |
| Open Source | Yes (Apache 2.0) |
What Is Highlight.io?
Highlight.io is an open-source monitoring platform that combines session replay, error monitoring, and logging in a single product. When an error occurs, you can see the exact session replay of what the user was doing, the error with its stack trace, and the backend logs from the same request — all correlated in one view.
The insight behind Highlight.io is that session replay, error tracking, and logging are most useful when connected. Sentry shows you the stack trace but not what the user was doing. FullStory shows the session but not the backend error. Highlight.io shows both in the same view, linked by the same request.
Key Features
Session Replay
Watch pixel-perfect recordings of user sessions. See clicks, scrolls, network requests, and console output. Sessions are linked to errors, so when something breaks, you see exactly what happened before the error.
Error Monitoring
Capture frontend and backend errors with stack traces, breadcrumbs, and user context. Errors are grouped and deduplicated. Click an error and jump to the session replay where it occurred.
Logging
Send structured logs from your backend. Logs are searchable, filterable, and linked to sessions and errors. When you see a 500 error in session replay, click through to the backend logs from that request.
Tracing
Distributed tracing across your frontend and backend. See the full request lifecycle: browser event, API call, database query, response. Identify where latency occurs and which services are involved.
Who Is This For?
- Full-stack teams that want session replay and error tracking in one tool
- Teams paying for separate replay and monitoring tools and wanting to consolidate
- Organizations that need self-hosted monitoring for compliance or data sovereignty
- Startups that want Datadog + FullStory capabilities without Datadog + FullStory pricing
Pros
- Session replay + errors + logs in one view
- Open source and self-hostable
- Correlated data (click error, see replay)
- Free tier for getting started
- SDKs for React, Next.js, Node.js, Python, Go
- Privacy-first: redact sensitive data automatically
Cons
- Session replay adds SDK weight and bandwidth
- Self-hosting requires ClickHouse and PostgreSQL
- Younger than Sentry and Datadog
- Frontend-focused (backend monitoring less mature)
- Limited alerting compared to dedicated APM tools
Verdict
Highlight.io’s core insight is correct: the most useful moment in debugging is when you see both the session replay and the error. Session replay without error context is a fishing expedition. Error tracking without session context is a guessing game. The combination is more than the sum of its parts.
Being open source and self-hostable gives Highlight.io an advantage for teams with compliance requirements. If your data can’t leave your infrastructure, self-hosted Highlight.io provides session replay and error monitoring that SaaS-only tools can’t.
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