Today’s technology needs to be always on and constantly connected. Unexpected downtime can negatively impact a company in all sorts of ways. Each year, roughly $26.5 billion in revenue is lost due to downtime, for one thing. Perhaps just as importantly, over half of the companies surveyed report that the outages and downtime damaged their reputation. An unexpected outage or unreliable performance could cause tremendous damage to a data-driven app or SaaS.

That’s one of the joys of APIs. Error monitoring APIs could automate error monitoring for your applications, preventing you from having to be chained to your desktop, waiting for meltdowns. Many API-driven services out there can deliver a continuous flow of real-time data letting you know how your services are performing.

We’ve compiled a few of the most useful error monitoring APIs tools that we’ve managed to find, to help ensure that your digital products are on-line and performing at 100%.

5 API-Based Error Monitoring Tools

Bugsnag

Bugsnag is an “application stability and error monitoring” solution that runs on over 50 platforms. It helps ensure apps and products are performing as they should, and it’s relatively easy to integrate their error monitoring code into whatever you’re working on.

Bugsnag reports are made available via a handful of APIs. It doesn’t just tell you when things go wrong, either. It also keeps detailed error logs and maintains extensive error capture libraries, all of which are widely customizable.

Finally, Bugsnag ranks errors in order of importance — so you’ll know which ones need to be fixed immediately and which can slide. All in all, this API suite could save you countless sleepless nights.

Rollbar

Rollbar is another error monitoring API for detecting errors in websites or applications built using Rails, Python, PHP, Node.js, Javascript, or Flash. Even better, their error monitoring is augmented with AI, helping you avoid mistakes before you make them.

Rollbar’s been around for a while, so that means it’s also widely available for nearly any platform you’re using to develop. It also integrates with several development platforms and third-party software, from PHP to Java to Trello or Github.

Some of the biggest companies and most popular software on the planet are already using Rollbar, from Adobe to Instacart to Twitch.

Sentry

Wanting to know when something’s gone wrong isn’t the only reason to use error monitoring. If you’re putting an error monitoring protocol in place, why not keep an eye on how your entire project is performing while you’re at it?

Sentry is an open-source solution for tracking how your projects perform across your entire stack. It not only detects errors, but it can also help you see what went wrong. It can pull up the exact line of code that’s causing an error, saving you much time and many headaches in the process.

The Sentry app also features a suite of dashboards to help you visualize what’s going on with your code. Even better, you can write custom queries for the app so you can visualize pretty much anything you want, in detail, in real-time.

Like Rollbar, you can deploy Sentry in nearly any development environment. You can use it in virtually any project you might be working on, as well, from mobile apps to serverless technology to the Internet of Things.

Errbit

Some of the error monitoring APIs on our list either offer a limited trial period, after which it becomes paid, or feature-limited capabilities for those on the free pricing tier. It’s nice to have a completely free, open-source error monitoring tool in your toolkit. Errbit is a free, open-source error monitoring solution that is still quite capable.

Errbit is predominantly meant to monitor applications, but its error tracking capabilities are quite extensive. Errors are grouped, with each error getting a unique fingerprint based on a number of criteria. Comprehensive information is compiled on each error, ranging from timestamp to the user’s IP address.

Errbit also coordinates easily with Airbrake, another popular error monitoring solutions out there. Airbrake costs money, though, even for the beginning plan, which is why we didn’t include it on our list. But it’s still a sign that Errbit could be easily slotted into an existing development stack with minimum fuss.

Do keep in mind that, being completely open-source, Errbit isn’t quite as immediately user-friendly as some other error monitoring APIs we’ve mentioned. It’s also primarily intended for users familiar with Ruby. Their documentation is excellent and thorough, though, so you should be able to follow along if you’re familiar with source code or cloud platforms like Heroku.

Rigor Monitoring

As we have seen, many error monitoring solutions are capable of doing a lot more. After all, the code that can tell you when something’s gone wrong could also be used to peek beneath the hood of your applications and websites to keep an eye on performance in general.

Rigor Monitoring API doesn’t just monitor for errors — it’s a robust performance monitoring tool that can tell you how every single one of your digital assets is performing, right down to the last JPG. One exciting thing about the Rigor Monitoring API is that developers can use it to monitor APIs themselves. This way, you can make sure your APIs are functioning up to their potential, as well.

The Rigor Monitoring API can also track user flows and behavior to give you insights into the effects performance issues might cause. You can even compare your site against your competition’s so you can see how your website holds up.

Error Monitoring APIs Roundup

As you can see from our roundup, error monitoring APIs can encapsulate a broad cross-section of intentions and behaviors. Something doesn’t necessarily have to be wrong, per se. Development teams can use error monitoring solutions to track and chart performance in general. Considering how widespread CI/CD utilities are becoming, error monitoring APIs will only keep getting more important.