The documented minimum
Sentry's self-hosted documentation lists these as the minimum requirements:
- 4 CPU cores
- 16 GB of RAM plus 16 GB of swap
- 20 GB of free disk space
- Docker 19.03.6 or later and Docker Compose 2.32.2 or later
The same page recommends 32 GB of RAM, says 16 GB plus swap works, and notes that a high-IOPS disk “will significantly improve” performance. The 20 GB is free space at install time. Events, attachments and the ClickHouse and Kafka data behind them grow from there with your volume and retention.
How many containers it runs
The installer is a Docker Compose project. In release 26.10.1, published October 29, 2026, its compose file defines 53 services. The default profile, feature-complete, starts all of them: PostgreSQL and PgBouncer, Redis, Memcached, Kafka, ClickHouse, an object store, Relay, Symbolicator, nginx, the web app, task workers and schedulers, and 18 Snuba workers.
Setting COMPOSE_PROFILES=errors-only in the .env file skips the 25 services that serve performance, profiling, replays, user feedback, cron and uptime monitoring, and leaves 28 running. The hardware minimum above is stated for the install as a whole; the documentation gives no separate figure for errors-only.
Upgrades and hard stops
Self-hosted Sentry follows a monthly CalVer schedule, with the main release on the 15th of each month. Old versions are not patched; a serious bug may get an out-of-cycle point release of the current one.
An install that falls behind cannot jump straight to the latest release. Sentry lists hard stops that every upgrade has to pass through, to pick up significant database changes: 9.1.2, 21.5.0, 21.6.3, 23.6.2, 23.11.0, 24.8.0, 25.5.1, 26.5.0 and 26.7.0. Two of those landed in 2026 alone, so a server left alone for a year has at least two staged upgrades to run before it is current.
When self-hosting is the right call
Self-hosting is the honest answer when error data may not leave your network, when you already run Kafka and ClickHouse and have someone on call for them, or when your volume is large enough that a dedicated machine is cheaper than any per-event price. In those cases the requirements above are a known, documented cost, and Sentry's own guide is the place to start.
For a small team that wanted self-hosting mainly to avoid a bill, the trade is different: a 16 GB server, its backups, and a monthly upgrade to keep it on the supported path, in exchange for not paying per event.
The hosted alternative
RealUptime Errors is hosted error tracking that accepts the Sentry SDK protocol. The free plan takes 10,000 events a month with 14-day retention, no card, and nothing to install beyond the SDK you already have: point its DSN at Errors and the same Sentry.init call keeps working. At the free cap events stop; there is no surprise charge.
It is narrower than Sentry on purpose: error tracking only, with no tracing, session replay or profiling. If those are what you self-host Sentry for, Errors does not replace them. The same signup also includes Monitor for uptime checks, Status for a public status page, and Outages for the vendors you depend on. Comparisons with Sentry, GlitchTip and Bugsink, two lighter self-hosted options, are sourced and dated the same way as this page.
Sources
All read on November 1, 2026.