Application Metric or Log? Which should you use?

Sentry offers both "Application Metrics" and "Logs", but both can seem pretty similar. Both logs and metrics are just a collection of attributes attached to a name in your code. Both can be counted, visualized, or alerted on. Both are not sampled by default. So how do you know which to choose?

In this video, we'll briefly go over a few examples of when to use logs and when to use metrics.

TLDR; Logs are designed for debugging and may be temporary or likely to change when problems arise. Metrics on the other hand are stable, purposely placed events used to track user behaviors.

Follow along with the companion blog: https://blog.sentry.io/when-you-need-a-metric/

Try Sentry for free: https://sentry.io/welcome
Docs: https://docs.sentry.io