Highlight

Highlight.io is an open-source full-stack monitoring platform that covers session replay, error tracking, logging, and distributed tracing in a single product. The distinctive value is the correlation between frontend session context and backend traces — teams can view exactly what a user experienced in their browser session alongside the backend traces and errors that occurred during that session. For agents analyzing user-reported issues, this correlation capability significantly reduces investigation time by providing full request context from user interaction to backend error.

Authentication uses project API keys for SDK instrumentation and the management API. Highlight's open-source version can be self-hosted with team-controlled credential management; the cloud version uses project-specific API keys managed through the dashboard.

Documentation is thorough and covers the SDK integration for major frameworks (React, Next.js, Node.js, Go, Python, Ruby). The correlation features between session replay and backend traces are well-documented. Teams evaluating Highlight versus Sentry for error tracking with session context will find Highlight's open-source option and full-stack correlation distinctive advantages.

The SDK covers both frontend (session recording, JS error capture) and backend (OpenTelemetry traces, structured logging). The REST API and GraphQL API enable agents to query errors, sessions, logs, and traces programmatically. Agents can retrieve error instances with associated session replay links and trace context, enabling automated issue triage that links frontend user experience to backend failure.

Reliability for Highlight Cloud is vendor-managed. The self-hosted option provides full data residency control at the cost of operational responsibility for the monitoring infrastructure. Teams with data residency requirements or significant monitoring data volumes may prefer self-hosting the open-source version.