Remember when debugging user issues meant asking them "can you tell me exactly what you were doing?" and getting responses like "I clicked the thing and it went whoosh"?
Those dark days are behind us thanks to session replay tools, which are like having a super-powered security camera for your app - minus the grainy footage and that one guard who's always falling asleep.
Let's look at some of the top players in this space and see how they're helping developers turn "works on my machine" into "works on every machine."
Fullstory
FullStory's session replay tool does more than just play back user sessions - it uses AI to generate quick summaries of what happened, which is super handy when you're trying to debug issues without watching hours of footage.
What really caught my eye though is their privacy approach - you can customize exactly what gets recorded and what gets masked out, which is crucial if you're dealing with sensitive data.
The tool automatically captures everything without requiring you to add special tags to your code (they call it "tagless autocapture"), and you can see all sorts of user behavior, even when people are jumping between multiple tabs.
FullStory also built in some neat features for tracking conversion funnels and generating heatmaps, so you can spot where users are getting stuck or dropping off. Basically, it's trying to be your all-in-one tool for understanding what's actually happening when users interact with your site or app.
Fullstory has a free two-week trial that includes 5,000 sessions but after that it’s not clear what they charge. Their website just says “contact us to discuss the plan option that will be best for your business.”
Dynatrace
Dynatrace’s session replay tool is integrated with their broader observability platform. It's particularly useful for debugging because it ties user sessions directly to backend traces, so when something goes wrong, you can follow the trail from the user's clicks all the way to the server hiccup that caused it.
They've put a lot of thought into making it work with modern web tech - it handles single page apps and various JavaScript frameworks out of the box, plus it does iOS stuff natively.
What's also cool is that they've built in these preset masking settings for privacy compliance (GDPR and all that jazz), so you're not accidentally recording sensitive data.
The big selling point seems to be that it's trying to be the bridge between frontend user experience and backend performance monitoring, which is pretty handy if you're already using Dynatrace for APM.
Dynatrace costs $0.0045 per session replay capture on top of their Dynatrace Platform Subscription.
Logrocket
You can tell Logrocket’s session replay tool was built specifically with developers in mind. Beyond just showing you what users are doing, Logrocket captures all the nitty-gritty technical stuff like console logs, network requests, and JavaScript exceptions. They have some neat integrations with backend monitoring tools too like Datadog, so you can trace issues from the user's actions all the way to the server problems.
There’s a lot of emphasis on the performance aspect - they claim their script won't bog down your app's performance or mess with page load times.
And like others, they too have an AI thing that automatically watches and summarizes sessions for you, so you don't have to sit through hours of replays to figure out what went wrong.
They're also pretty flexible with deployment - you can either use their SaaS version or self-host if you need to keep everything in-house.
Logrocket has a free plan with session replay that includes 1,000 sessions per month.
Datadog
What's neat about Datadog’s session replay tool is that since it's part of Datadog, you can tie it into their error tracking and APM tools, making it really useful for debugging complex issues where you need to see both the user's perspective and what's happening under the hood. They've also got all the enterprise-y stuff you'd expect - role-based access control, privacy features for sensitive data, etc.
They recently added a heatmap feature that shows you where users are clicking most, which is pretty handy for UX stuff.
Datadog has a free plan with core collection and visualization features and on top of that offers session replay for $1.80 per month (billed annually) for 1,000 sessions per month.
Sentry
If you’re already using Sentry for error monitoring, their session replay tool is super integrated - so when you get an error report, you can immediately jump into the replay of what the user was doing when things went wrong.
They've built in some developer-friendly features like access to console outputs, network calls, and even the DOM tree right in the replay view (basically like having Chrome DevTools inside Sentry).
One neat thing they've added recently is detection for "rage clicks" and "dead clicks" to help spot where users are getting frustrated.
The setup looks pretty straightforward too - just a few lines of code if you're already using their error monitoring. They've put a lot of emphasis on privacy, with options to mask sensitive data before it ever leaves the browser.
Sentry has a free plan for solo devs working on small projects that includes 50 session replays and 5,000 errors monitored per month.
👀 One More Thing…
You've seen how these session replay tools help debug production issues. But what if you could get even deeper insights?
We're working on something new at Rollbar. Something that rethinks how session replay should work in 2025 and beyond. We can't share the details yet, but if you're interested in error monitoring that actually shows you what happened... well, stay tuned.
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