Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Raygun VS NLog

Compare Raygun VS NLog and see what are their differences

Raygun logo Raygun

Raygun gives developers meaningful insights into problems affecting their applications. Discover issues - Understand the problem - Fix things faster.

NLog logo NLog

NLog is a free logging platform for .NET with rich log routing and management capabilities.
  • Raygun Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19
  • NLog Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-07

Raygun features and specs

  • Comprehensive Error Tracking
    Raygun provides detailed insights and diagnostics for errors, including stack traces, affected users, and environment information. This helps developers quickly identify and fix issues.
  • Real User Monitoring
    Raygunโ€™s Real User Monitoring (RUM) feature tracks actual user sessions, giving insights into user experience, performance metrics, and identifying bottlenecks in real-time.
  • Crash Reporting
    Raygun offers robust crash reporting for both mobile and web applications, which helps in identifying, diagnosing, and resolving application crashes effectively.
  • Integrations
    Raygun integrates seamlessly with many development tools like JIRA, Slack, GitHub, and others, enabling smooth workflow management and collaboration.
  • Custom Dashboards
    Users can create custom dashboards tailored to their specific needs, helping them track important metrics and outcomes at a glance.
  • Performance Monitoring
    Raygunโ€™s performance monitoring allows you to keep an eye on application performance, detecting slow load times, and providing actionable insights to improve speeds.
  • User Tracking
    Raygun can track specific user sessions which helps in understanding how individual users are affected by bugs and performance issues.

Possible disadvantages of Raygun

  • Cost
    Raygun can be relatively expensive compared to some other error-monitoring tools, especially for small businesses or startups.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    New users may find the platform complex initially, requiring time and effort to understand all the features and functions.
  • Limited Free Tier
    The free tier of Raygun is limited in terms of features and usages, which may not be sufficient for growing projects or enterprises.
  • Overhead
    Integrating Raygun into projects may introduce some performance overhead, particularly if not configured properly.
  • Alert Fatigue
    Raygun can generate a large number of alerts, which can lead to alert fatigue and make it difficult to prioritize critical issues without proper filtering and configurations.

NLog features and specs

  • Flexibility
    NLog is highly configurable and can be extended to suit various logging requirements. It supports different logging targets like files, databases, console, and more, allowing developers to choose the appropriate medium for their logging needs.
  • Easy to Use
    NLog offers a straightforward setup process and provides an intuitive API for logging in .NET applications, making it easy for developers to integrate it into their projects.
  • Performance
    NLog is known for its high performance, capable of handling large volumes of log entries efficiently. It offers asynchronous logging, which helps reduce the performance impact on applications.
  • Rich Features
    NLog includes advanced features like log filtering, layout rendering, multi-targeting, and more. It supports conditional logging and can be extended with custom targets and layouts.
  • Active Community and Support
    NLog has an active open-source community, offering wide support, regular updates, and extensive documentation, which helps developers resolve issues and implement best practices.

Possible disadvantages of NLog

  • Configuration Complexity
    While NLog is flexible, its configuration can become complex, especially for large applications with multiple log targets and custom setups, requiring careful management and understanding.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers new to logging frameworks or .NET logging libraries, there may be a learning curve to fully understand and utilize all of NLog's features and configuration options.
  • Dependency Management
    Introducing NLog into a project adds an additional dependency, which can complicate dependency management if the project already uses other logging libraries or has specific dependency restrictions.
  • Overhead
    Although NLog is designed for performance, some setups might introduce overhead, particularly if synchronous logging is used extensively or improper configurations are applied, impacting application performance.
  • Potential Over-configuration
    The wide range of customizable options can sometimes lead developers to over-configure their logging setup, which may result in maintenance challenges and difficulties in managing log outputs effectively.

Analysis of Raygun

Overall verdict

  • Raygun is a solid choice for teams looking for comprehensive error tracking and real user monitoring. Its robust feature set and user-friendly interface make it a strong contender in the application monitoring space.

Why this product is good

  • Raygun is widely regarded as a good error and performance monitoring tool because it provides detailed crash reports, real-time user monitoring, and integrates seamlessly with a variety of development tools. It helps developers identify and resolve issues quickly, offering clear insights into the root cause of errors and how they affect user experiences.

Recommended for

  • Developers who need detailed crash reports and diagnostics.
  • Teams looking for real-time performance monitoring.
  • Organizations that require effective integration with existing development workflows.
  • Software companies that want to optimize end-user experiences.

Raygun videos

Nike Dunk SB โ€œRaygunโ€ Review & On Feet

More videos:

  • Review - 2019 K2 Raygun Snowboard Review
  • Review - The K2 Raygun Snowboard Review

NLog videos

NLog Synth PRO - AUv3 Synth - Amazingly CPU Friendly Synth - Review & Demo

More videos:

  • Demo - IOS Synth Review: NLog Pro Synth Overview and Sound Demos

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Raygun and NLog)
Error Tracking
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
62 62%
38% 38
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Exception Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Raygun and NLog

Raygun Reviews

6 Bugsnag Alternatives to Consider in 2021
RayGun is close to being the perfect error monitoring solution in the market, owing to its support for nearly all frameworks and languages. Its SDKs are also known to be very lightweight. RayGun can sort through errors intelligently and help you identify the segment of users affected by a specific issue. Another striking feature of RayGun is that it provides crystal clear...
Source: scoutapm.com
10 Best Application Monitoring Tools for all Platforms
Raygun seems so effective to alert you when you got your app crashed by gathering the data and send it to your email by notification. It is quite simple, but Raygun is effective and real-time. Suppose you have some difficulties to find some bugs in your app, then you can use the search function feature available. Therefore, it is a good idea if you put this application...
Source: www.technig.com
The top 19 APM tools in 2020
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) from Raygun offers a comprehensive solution that enables you to monitor the performance of your applications from one central location. Crash Reporting, Real User Monitoring, and APM software work together to provide real-time data about the user experience and performance, which you can easily leverage to identify bottlenecks. Simply...
Source: raygun.com

NLog Reviews

We have no reviews of NLog yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Raygun might be a bit more popular than NLog. We know about 8 links to it since March 2021 and only 6 links to NLog. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Raygun mentions (8)

  • Best Practices for Consistent API Error Handling
    Tools like Sentry support distributed tracing in over 15 languages, while Raygun offers deployment correlation to pinpoint issues [2]. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 12 Best Instabug Alternatives For Debugging In 2025
    Raygun is the application monitoring and error tracking tool, which helps developers find and diagnose, hence resolve the issue in real time. It gives detailed crash reports, performance insights, and user session data to ensure the general application reliability and user experience. Raygun has support for all web, mobile, and backend systems and also supports integrating with tools such as Jira and Slack for... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Sentry Alternatives for Better Error Tracking
    Raygun is a comprehensive software monitoring and performance management platform that helps developers and teams deliver high-quality, error-free software experiences for their users. The tool provides a suite of features to monitor, diagnose, and resolve issues across web and mobile applications. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • 10 best Javascript debugging tools
    Raygun is a cloud-based platform that makes sure your web and mobile applications are free of errors, as well as your users are satisfied. It specializes in JavaScript error monitoring and offers a wide range of features to help you easily detect and fix issues. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How Handle Bugs in Agile Development
    We can make the process a little easier by using our agile processes together with a continuous deployment strategy. For example, our friends at Raygun, discovered that โ€œwhen a team gets locked into a sprint it can become much harder to recognize and fix bugsโ€. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
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NLog mentions (6)

  • Essential .NET Libraries Every Developer Should Know
    Need an alternative logging library? NLog is another fantastic choice. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Best approach for logging in ASP.NET
    Log4Net does not get that much attention any more. From my understanding it served as an alternative for Log4J, but today better and more modern solutions have been created. I migrated a codebase over to .NET Core a couple of years ago, and it seemed that Log4net had issues running on Linux because of kernel calls inside their codebase. If you look at the version history on NuGet, it had just 3 patch releases last... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Powershell logging module
    I'm going to look at psframework mentioned elsewhere, but I make use of .NET NLog https://nlog-project.org/. it's not terribly hard to wire up, and is pretty feature rich. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Writing logs into Elastic with NLog , ELK andย .Netย 5.0
    On the other hand, NLog is a flexible and free logging platform for various .NET platforms, including .NET standard. NLog makes it easy to write to several targets. (database, file, console) and change the logging configuration on-the-fly. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago
  • How do you separate production code from development code? Do you manually remove logging at every release?
    For instance, we use NLog for our .NET projects. The nice thing there is that you use an external configuration file (nlog.config or your application's default configuration file) to configure logging. You can specify various "loggers" and "appenders", so that you can route your logs to several places, and all you have to do is change configuration between environments. You can do things like allowing for... Source: over 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Raygun and NLog, you can also consider the following products

Sentry.io - From error tracking to performance monitoring, developers can see what actually matters, solve quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend.

Serilog - Backend Development and Utilities

Rollbar - Rollbar collects errors that happen in your application, notifies you, and analyzes them so you can debug and fix them. Ruby, Python, PHP, Node.js, JavaScript, and Flash libraries available.

ZeroLog - ZeroLog is a JSON logging library that allows you to log messages in a structured, searchable, and easily parseable format and allow for customizable output.

BugSnag - Not all bugs are worth fixing. Prioritize and fix software bugs that matter while improving software stability with every release.

LogTailApp - LogTail is a local and remote (SSH) log file viewer and monitoring application for Mac OS X. It is a pure, modern, document-based Cocoa App