Telebugs

Lightweight, self-hosted Sentry alternative

Developer Tools

Hey hunters 👋 It’s been a while since my last launch... I’ve been knee-deep in error tracking for nearly a decade, interning at Bugsnag and spending most of my career at Airbrake. So when I needed a better way to track errors in my own apps, I knew what I wanted (and what I didn’t). I was fed up with monthly bills and SaaS lock-in, with my data stuck on someone else’s server. As a solo dev, I crave privacy and hate endless fees. I first tried launching Telebugs as a SaaS in 2024, mixing error tracking with Telegram notifications, but it flopped — nobody cared. Then I stumbled on 37signals’ ONCE, and it was like a lightbulb went off. Their pay-once, self-hosted vibe inspired me to rebuild Telebugs from the ground up. It took 3½ months of solo grinding, and I’m legit stoked with the results. Telebugs is an error tracker you pay for once, host yourself, and actually own. It’s compatible with Sentry SDKs, so it probably supports your language or framework of choice. Setup is dead simple: one command and you’re rolling in 5 minutes. It catches your errors, keeps everything on your machine, and doesn’t bug you with upsells or surprise fees. Tech stack: - Rails 8 + Hotwire + TailwindCSS - SQLite (yep) - Runs in a single Docker container - Compatible with Sentry SDKs - Push + email alerts (needs to be enabled explicitly) - Rule-based data cleanup - No analytics, no third-party calls It’s built for people like us who just want something that works without the headache. I’d love to hear what you think. Happy to answer any questions here or over email. Cheers!