The Best JavaScript Monitoring & Debugging Tools

JavaScript, being a dynamic and loosely-typed language, is especially prone to errors. If not syntactical, there’s a high chance that you’ll get a logical error

Unfortunately, many of these errors are challenging to diagnose. The frustrating thing is that often you won’t get an error message or any clue about where the errors are occurring. The process of finding and resolving bugs or errors in computer software is called code debugging.

Here’s our list of the best Tools to Monitor and Debug JavaScript:

1. Site24x7 Real User Monitoring EDITOR’S CHOICE This package of features on a cloud SaaS platform provides a range of tools for analyzing JavaScript programs by tracking errors as they arise when users of a Web application activate faulty code. The platform has a number of other free JavaScript management tools Start a 30-day free trial.
2. JS Bin An open-source collaborative web development debugging tool for JavaScript HTML, CSS, and a few others.
3. ESLint An open-source tool that lets you find and fix problems in your JavaScript code.
4. Sentry A well-known application monitoring and debugging platform that helps developers diagnose, fix and optimize the performance of JavaScript codes and others.
5. GlitchTip An open-source bug tracking platform that collects every error from your project in real-time and stores them in one place.
6. Raygun A cloud-based platform that provides error, crash, and performance monitoring for your JavaScript and other web and mobile applications.
7. Rollbar Another commercial JavaScript monitoring and debugging tool whose primary goal is to help development teams deliver high-quality software.
8. Airbrake Αn error monitoring and performance management platform for your entire application stack to enable you to deploy code and fix issues faster.

Debugging is undoubtedly not an easy task. The difficulty of software debugging varies significantly with the system’s complexity and depends, to some extent, on the programming language(s) used and the available tools. In the case of JavaScript, its asynchronous nature makes it challenging to locate problems. This makes debugging JavaScript and pinning down the root cause of your errors difficult. But fortunately, most modern browsers have a built-in JavaScript debugger. But the challenge is that built-in debuggers can be turned on and off, forcing errors to be reported to the user.

As software and electronic systems have become more complex, production environments mean more potential issues every time new code is deployed. That’s where a standard JavaScript debugging and monitoring tool comes into play. You need a reliable JavaScript debugging tool that provides peace of mind so you can deploy codes fearlessly and fix issues faster. With a debugger, you can also set breakpoints and examine variables while the code is executing. Thankfully, due to the plethora of JavaScript debugging tools available, troubleshooting is usually straightforward.

Choosing the Right JavaScript Monitoring & Debugging Tool

With various JavaScript monitoring and debugging tools, choosing the right one for your development project can be challenging; first, you need to identify your use cases and look specifically for the tools that best address your needs. When making your selection, you need to consider some key factors: Does the tool promote team collaboration and time efficiency? Does it generate test reports? Does it take care of everything, or would you still need to use third-party tools? What debugging tactics are employed? Debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, unit testing, static code analysis, integration testing, log file analysis, control flow analysis, memory dumps, and monitoring at the application or system level.

Your goal should be to get a comprehensive collection of capabilities in one tool, rather than relying on several different tools to do the task. Of course, depending on your use case, some tools might be better than others, but all will save you time in the debugging process. In this article, we’re going to review the seven best JavaScript monitoring and debugging tools to guide you in the process of choosing the right one for your project.

The Best Tools to Monitor and Debug JavaScript

1. Site24x7 Real User Monitoring (FREE TRIAL)

Site24x7 Real User Monitoring provides a way to spot JavaScript errors that crop up once a Web application has gone live. JavaScript error tracking is just one of the features in the Real User Monitoring unit. The error report includes details of the environment at the time that the error was logged.

The tool also provides runtime measurements for factors such as resource usage. The unit records the circumstances of each component’s launch. This is useful information because previous steps could be at fault for an error that emerged while JaveScript was running. For example, it could be that required inputs were incorrectly set up.

Other features and capabilities include:

• Integration with APM Insight for full root cause analysis and code step-through
• The ability to track JavaScript in any website feature, which could be implemented through a plug-in provided by a third-party
• Tracks user journeys through a site and ranks the popularity of pages
• Useful for measuring live sites
• Records user location and browser details

Two other units on the Site24x7 platform assist with Java monitoring. The first is the APM Insights module, which can step through Java code and examine JVMs. The other is Synthetic Monitoring, which lets you launch tests, which can include complicated actions through the site, recorded and replayed. The combination of these three services makes the Sitre24x7 platform a good choice for JavaScript monitoring and troubleshooting. You can assess the system by activating a 30-day free trial.

2. JS Bin

JS Bin is an open-source collaborative web development debugging tool for JavaScript HTML, CSS, and a few others. It was specifically designed to help JavaScript and CSS folk test code snippets within some context and debug the code collaboratively right on the JS Bin website. JS Bin stands out as one of the best JavaScript collaborative debugging tools out there. It allows you to test and debug scripts right along with other people. As you type into one of the editor “panels”, you and anyone watching your bin will see the output being generated in real-time in the output panel.

JS Bin is noted for its simplicity, and you can see any changes made to your JavaScript code in real-time.

Other features and capabilities include:

• Full unmodified rendered view and live to reload both in the editor and a full preview
• JavaScript linting (inline to code, gutter, or in footer) with complete config control
• Help debug other people’s JavaScript, HTML, or CSS by sharing and editing URLs
• CodeCast – where you share what you’re typing in JS Bin in real-time
• Remote rendering – view the output of your JS Bin on any device on any platform, updating in real-time

JS Bin provides no accurate monitoring capabilities and no privacy protection, which means that unless you pay for a ‘private bin’, your code is technically exposed to the public. Nevertheless, the simplicity, debugging features, and open-source model make it ideal for independent JavaScript developers and small teams who just need to check their code quickly.

3. ESLint

ESLint is an open-source tool that lets you find and fix problems in your JavaScript code. ESLint, as the name implies, is a JavaScript linting utility–a static code analysis tool used to flag programming errors, bugs, stylistic errors, and suspicious constructs. ESLint covers both code quality and coding style issues to make code more consistent and avoid bugs.

As of 2021, ESLint is the most downloaded JavaScript linter. The primary reason ESLint was created was to allow developers to create their own linting rules. It is designed to have all rules wholly configurable and pluggable.

Key features and capabilities include:

• Find problems: ESLint statically analyzes your code to find issues quickly.
• Fix automatically: Many problems ESLint finds can be automatically fixed. In addition, ESLint fixes are syntax-aware so that you won’t experience errors introduced by traditional find-and-replace algorithms.
• Customize: You can customize ESLint to work precisely the way you need it for your project.
• Everything is pluggable: Rules and formatters don’t have to be bundled to be used.
• Every rule is standalone, can be turned off or on, and set to a warning or error individually.

4. Sentry

Sentry is a well-known application monitoring and debugging platform that helps developers diagnose, fix and optimize the performance of JavaScript codes and others. The service compiles bugs and code errors into a searchable list and allows you to identify areas of your code to make it easier to reproduce the mistakes. In addition, sentry’s stack tracing feature helps to stimulate your development environment, enabling you to debug errors and better understand the root cause and where they are occurring in the code.

The Sentry has a suite of JavaScript monitoring tools that hooks into your runtime environment to do the heavy lifting of debugging for you. Sentry for JavaScript gives you the full context in the form of full stack traces, support for source maps that unify your code, and direct integration with your source code management tool to help you identify suspect commits. In addition, sentry’s Issue Details page gives you the device, OS, and browser of your users to enable you to gain complete visibility into what led up to your JavaScript incident. And with Sentry’s query builder called Discover, you can debug JavaScript with pre-built searches that filter your JavaScript events, unique errors, errors by URL, and client.

Sentry’s licensing plans include both freemium and premium options. A free trial is also available for both the Team and Business editions. Additionally, if you approach Sentry directly, Enterprise size services are available if you require large-scale considerations such as complete platform error monitoring and cross-project insights.

5. GlitchTip

GlitchTip is an open-source bug tracking platform that collects every error from your project in real-time and stores them in one place. The tool was created in response to Sentry’s decision to abandon open-source and re-license Sentry. In other words, GlitchTip is an open-source reimplementation of the Sentry error tracking platform. GlitchTip can use Sentry’s open-source SDKs to receive error data from your application.

GlitchTip can be hosted locally (self-hosted) because it is open-source, but it also provides hosting services. GlitchTip is open-source means that it has a larger community of developers and users than some other similar products. However, Glitch Tip is still in its early stage and lacks some features of Sentry, such as charts, advanced queries, and others. As a result, GlitchTip is ideal for independent developers, SMBs, and low-budget projects.

6. Raygun

Raygun is a cloud-based platform that provides error, crash, and performance monitoring for your JavaScript and other web and mobile applications. With Raygun, you can monitor your web application for JavaScript errors and performance issues impacting your end-user experience. In addition, Raygun aggregates user data to enable accurate crash reporting and bug feedback. The solution is divided into three primary product functions as follows:

• Crash Reporting: This tool enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve errors with ease, and gain complete visibility across your entire tech stack. All major programming languages and frameworks, including .NET, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, and more, are supported.

• Real User Monitoring: This tool enables you to monitor and improve front-end performance and gain visibility into front-end performance. Languages and frameworks such as JavaScript, Angular, Xamarin, React, iOS, and Android are supported.

• Application Performance Monitoring: This tool lets you have code-level visibility into server-side performance, including how your code is being executed, so you know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.

Key features and capabilities include:

• Complete stack traces and error occurrence data from your minified JavaScript
• Monitor and fix JavaScript performance problem
• Inbuilt bug fixing and User monitoring
• visibility into JavaScript errors
• Error reporting and feedback

Raygun provides various price plans to suit your needs.  All plans are charged per usage and come standard with unlimited users and applications. In addition, a Free endless 14 days monitoring is available to enable you to test run before purchase.

7. Rollbar

Rollbar is another commercial JavaScript monitoring and debugging tool whose primary goal is to help development teams deliver high-quality software. Rollbar provides real-time error reporting, fault aggregation, exception reporting, and continuous deployment monitoring for developers. It acts as your safety blanket by catching errors before it gets noticed by your users, with Rollbar.

JavaScript errors are tracked as they occur, and you’ll get notified on how to fix them throughout the software development process. All errors include detailed data to help you assess the impact and assign priority. In addition, rollbar automated issue tracking and workflow triggers help you avoid accidentally shipping applications and codes with known and unresolved errors.

Other features and capabilities include:

• Telemetry for faster debugging: Helps you debug client-side JavaScript errors faster.
• Discover: Get real-time alerts and feed of all errors
• Prioritize: see the impact of mistakes with metadata to know which ones you need to respond to first.
• Resolve: Identify and resolve the root cause of errors through stack traces, local variables, telemetry, suspect deploys, and other metadata.
• Automate error response: AI-assisted workflows help you take action on new and reactivated errors before impacting users.

Rollbar licensing plans include both free and premium plans. The freemium version is free for up to 25,000 error events and has enough basic capabilities to get you started, ideal for small development teams with a low budget. The premium option covers up to 50,000 error events for the Essential plan and 100k error events, among other features for the Advanced package.  A free trial of the premium version is also available to enable a test run before purchase. The trial includes all Advanced features as well as unlimited events. After the trial expires, you can subscribe to a paid plan that best fits your needs or downgrade to a Free plan.

8. Airbrake

Airbrake is an error monitoring and performance management platform for your entire application stack to enable you to deploy code and fix issues faster. The platform is targeted at developers and supports JavaScript, PHP, Python, Java, and other languages. Airbrake provides real-time error alerts, rich contextual data about why errors are occurring, application performance insights, and integrates with your workflow so you can quickly diagnose and fix problems as they happen.

For better bug notifications and workflow management, the tool can be integrated with Bitbucket, Slack, Zapier, Github, and other third-party tools. One unique thing about Airbrake is that it is agentless and serverless, with fast lightweight installation, and zero impact on app performance.

Additional features and capabilities include:

• Error Monitoring: Airbrake provides 24/7 monitoring of your entire app stack with real-time alerts sent straight to your inbox or an integrated messaging app
• Debug Issues: Identify the root cause of errors, find errors that occurred in a given timeframe, or mistakes that have specific attributes and speed error fixes.
• Performance Monitoring: Understand the health of your total app stack and turn performance data into actionable insights.
• Deploy Tracking: Avoid continuous headaches from CI/CD by monitoring deployments to understand trends in your code quality.
• Understand Database Performance: Use a variety of metrics to measure your application’s database performance.

Airbrake provides various price plans grouped in different tiers and billed annually. For example, error Monitoring and Performance Monitoring are billed as two separate products. You can independently select the tier of Error Monitoring or Performance Monitoring that best suits your needs. A free 30-day trial is available for all of the product’s features.lysts can leverage the Splunk ES modern SIEM capabilities to investigate and resolve the security threats across the network.

Splunk ES key features and capabilities include:

• Splunk ES provides ready-to-use intelligence from Splunk’s user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) and threat research team that you can leverage to enhance detection and response efforts.
• Dashboards for visual display and security metrics support your continuous security monitoring strategy.
• Investigate, correlate, aggregate, and analyze activities context across multi-cloud and on-premises all from one unified view.
• Machine data from the cloud and on-premises sources helps you gain full visibility for faster detection of malicious threats in your environment.
• Splunk ES cloud SIEM delivers faster time to value, allowing security teams to focus on other pressing security tasks.

Splunk was named a leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). Many organizations around the world use Splunk ES as their SIEM and SOC automation tool for security event monitoring, threat detection, and response, and other security analytics and operations use cases. The application can be deployed on-premises, or in a cloud service (SaaS—public or private cloud) together with Splunk Cloud or any combination of these.

A free 60-day trial is available for Splunk Enterprise and a free 14-day trial is available for Splunk Cloud Platform.