Errbit

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 753 words

You have gem 'airbrake' in a Gemfile, or pybrake or gobrake in a requirements file, and an Airbrake invoice you would like to stop paying. That is the case for Errbit, and it is close to the only one. It implements the Airbrake API on your own box, so the notifier libraries you already ship keep working with a one-line host change, and it has been doing that since 2011. If your applications do not already speak Airbrake, GlitchTip is the safer pick and the rest of this page will tell you why.

Airbrake-compatible only, and what that means

Errbit accepts what Airbrake's official notifiers send: the exception, backtrace, request parameters, session, environment and user context. Notifiers exist from Airbrake for Ruby, JavaScript, Python, Go, PHP, Java and .NET, and each is configured the same way, with host pointed at your Errbit and project_key set to the app's API key from the Errbit UI:

Airbrake.configure do |c|
  c.host = "https://errors.example.com"
  c.project_id = 1
  c.project_key = "app-key-from-errbit"
end

What you get on the other side is grouping: identical errors collapse into one problem with a count, first and last seen, and a resolved flag, so a deploy that throws 40,000 times reads as one line. What you do not get is anything beyond errors. No performance monitoring, no tracing, no session replay, no release health, and no Sentry SDK support, which by now is the protocol most new libraries and frameworks assume.

MongoDB is the operational cost

Errbit stores everything in MongoDB, and for most self-hosters that is the first and only MongoDB on the network. It is one more engine to learn, back up with mongodump, and keep on a version the app supports; check the Errbit release notes before bumping the mongo image, because the driver lags new server majors. The catalogue's "requires MongoDB" con is the honest summary. For a low-traffic error stream the footprint is fine, 512 MB for the pair is realistic, but it is a dependency you would not choose for anything else.

The compose that boots

services:
  errbit:
    image: errbit/errbit:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      - ERRBIT_HOST=errors.example.com
      - ERRBIT_PROTOCOL=https
      - MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo:27017/errbit
      - SECRET_KEY_BASE=replace-with-64-hex-characters
      - [email protected]
      - ERRBIT_ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me
    depends_on:
      - mongo
    restart: unless-stopped
  mongo:
    image: mongo:6
    volumes:
      - ./mongo:/data/db
    restart: unless-stopped

Bring it up, then run docker compose exec errbit bundle exec rake errbit:bootstrap once to create the indexes and the admin user. Add an app in the UI, copy its key into the notifier config, throw a test exception, and the problem appears within seconds. Put a reverse proxy with TLS in front; notifiers will be sending request parameters, which often include things you would not want on the wire in plain text.

Integrations are where the age shows well

Each app can push new problems to an issue tracker (GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Redmine and others) with one click, and notification rules fan out to email, Slack-style webhooks and chat services. That is the part of Errbit that has aged gracefully: it is a Rails app with a plugin model that long-lived teams have kept wired into their tooling for a decade, and it is why the project still sits at 4,270 stars. The user interface, on the other hand, looks its age and nobody pretends otherwise.

GlitchTip is the safer pick for everyone else

GlitchTip speaks the Sentry protocol, runs on PostgreSQL, adds uptime checks and basic performance data, and is the tool I point people to for leaving Sentry or Airbrake alike. Errbit is the right answer only when switching notifiers across a fleet of legacy apps costs more than running MongoDB.

What I'd do

Legacy Rails or Python fleet on Airbrake notifiers: Errbit, the compose above behind Caddy, mongodump nightly, and a note in the runbook that it is a maintenance-mode choice. For the Airbrake replacement on anything you are still actively developing: swap the notifier for the Sentry SDK and run GlitchTip. Doing both for a year while the old apps migrate is a reasonable plan; doing Errbit forever is not.