Raygun Real User Monitoring vs Sematext Experience (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Raygun Real User Monitoring and Sematext Experience share a 2.2 GPA, neither has a free plan, and Sematext Experience starts cheaper, at $9 a month against $80 a month.
Checked Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Raygun Real User Monitoring grades higher on platforms. Sematext Experience grades higher on value for money. They get the same grade on the free plan, features and ease of use.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Raygun Real User Monitoring
Real user monitoring for web and mobile front-end performance
Sematext Experience
Real user monitoring for front-end speed and page-load problems
Which one is for you
Pick Raygun Real User Monitoring if
- Fits if you ship often and want to see speed change per release
- Works for teams that want per-customer session lookups
Look elsewhere if
- Pricey if you pay monthly, at $120 against $80 billed annually
- Tight if you want alerts, as Core Web Vitals alerts, integrations and custom dashboards start at Team
- Watch out: sessions beyond your quota are charged on demand at $0.002
- Watch out: the pricing table mixes session and error labels
- Skip it if you want visitor analytics, as this is speed monitoring only
Pick Sematext Experience if
- Fits if you care about how fast pages load for real visitors
- Works for teams that already use Sematext for logs or servers
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want visitor or marketing analytics, as it only measures performance
- Tight if traffic spikes, because data stops being accepted when the page-view limit is hit
- Watch out: the pricing page shows only the $9 entry price, and higher tiers depend on page views and retention
- Watch out: each Experience app has its own plan and limit
How we grade them
| 2.2GPARaygun Real User MonitoringFair | 2.2GPASematext ExperienceFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | C$80 a month billed annually ($120 monthly) for 100,000 sessions sits between the middle ($32) and the dearer quarter ($150) of analytics tools. | B$9 a month ($8.10 billed annually), inside the cheaper quarter of analytics tools, which starts at $13. |
| Free plan and trial | CA 14-day trial with no card. No free plan. | CA 14-day trial with no card. No free plan. |
| Features | CCore Web Vitals, waterfalls, filters, customer lookup and deployment tracking do the job of speed monitoring fully, but it is a smaller job than analytics. | CCore Web Vitals, session timelines, alerts and URL groups cover the job of speed monitoring completely, but it is a smaller job than analytics and is not product or marketing analytics. |
| Ease of use | CNo store rating on record. You add a script and set up alerts, tags and dashboards. | CNo store rating on record. You add a script and set up an app, thresholds and alerts. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb only, with Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Jira and an API listed. | CWeb only. Framework guides for React, Vue.js, Angular and Ember, and it joins with Sematext backend logs. |
| Best for | real-user speed monitoring tied to deployments | real-user speed monitoring from $9 |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Raygun Real User Monitoring and Sematext Experience. How we grade
Price against what you get
Raygun Real User Monitoring starts at $80 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Sematext Experience starts at $9 a month and scores 2.0.
Raygun Real User Monitoring scores higher, and starts $71 a month higher: the question is whether the extra is worth that to you. Of the other website and product analytics tools on the chart, 27 score higher than Raygun Real User Monitoring for less, and 7 score higher than Sematext Experience for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Sematext Experience also covers log file analysis.
At a glance
| Raygun Real User Monitoring | Sematext Experience | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free trial |
| Starts at | $80 per month for 100,000 sessions, billed annually ($120 billed monthly) | $9 per month, billed monthly ($8.10 billed annually) |
| Free plan | None | None |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial, no credit card required | 14-day free trial, no credit card needed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Raygun | Sematext |
| Price read from | raygun.com | sematext.com |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Nov 13, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Raygun Real User Monitoring
- There is no free plan; the entry paid tier is $80 a month billed annually ($120 billed monthly).
- The pricing table labels RUM quotas inconsistently (some labels say errors); its footnote refers to reserved sessions, charged on demand at $0.002 beyond them.
- Core Web Vitals alerts, integrations and custom dashboards start at the Team plan.
- Saving 33% needs annual billing; Crash Reporting lists SAML SSO and priority support on Business.
Sematext Experience
- The pricing page renders only the entry price ($9 a month); tier prices for Standard and Pro depend on page views and retention.
- When a plan's page-view limit is passed, data stops being accepted until the daily or monthly limit resets.
- It measures performance; it is not a product analytics or marketing analytics tool.
- The page-view limit is chosen per Experience app, and each app can have its own plan.
Key features
Raygun Real User Monitoring
- Core Web Vitals and UX metrics
- Tracks Google's Core Web Vitals from real users, with root cause analysis down to a single asset.
- Page-level diagnostics
- A full waterfall of DNS, latency, SSL, server and transfer times for each page, with instance-level diagnostics for individual requests.
- Filtering and segments
- Data can be filtered and compared by time, location, browser, device, release version or custom tags.
- Customer Experience Monitoring
- Search an individual customer to see a breakdown of their sessions and errors.
- Deployment tracking and alerts
- Watch the performance impact of each deployment, with custom alerts for slow pages and a daily Slack summary.
Sematext Experience
- Frontend and Core Web Vitals metrics
- Collects page load times, HTTP requests, resources and UI interactions, plus Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Cumulative Layout Shift.
- Session timelines
- Individual user sessions are shown as page loads, transactions and requests in a timeline or table, with slow-loading elements and memory trends.
- Alerts and anomaly detection
- Alerts can be set on any performance metric and apdex, and anomaly detection flags irregular spikes without hand-written rules.
- Front-end and backend in one view
- Front-end metrics can be combined with backend logs and monitoring data in the same Sematext account for troubleshooting.
- URL groups and custom measurements
- URL Groups bundle page patterns into sections of a site, and custom measurements with thresholds can be collected.
Plans
Raygun Real User Monitoring
Basic$80
per month for 100,000 sessions, billed annually ($120 billed monthly)
Unlimited apps and members, Core Web Vitals, page-level insights, slow-page alerts, deployment tracking and the Raygun API.
Team$160
per month for 200,000 sessions, billed annually ($240 billed monthly)
Adds Core Web Vitals alerts, third-party integrations, unlimited custom dashboards, custom timings and user roles.
Business$800
per month for 1M sessions, billed annually ($1,200 billed monthly)
Marked most popular for RUM; quota rises to 1M sessions a month. Feature list not shown in the RUM table.
EnterpriseCustom
Talk-to-sales plan with custom terms, volume discounts and SLAs.
Sematext Experience
Experience$9
per month and up, billed monthly ($8.10 billed annually)
Starting price shown on the pricing page. The page lists Startup (25k page views a month), Standard and Pro tiers, priced by page views and retention.
Ways to pay less
Raygun Real User Monitoring
- Annual discount
Save 33% with annual billing
The pricing page labels annual billing as saving 33% against monthly: Basic RUM is $80 billed annually against $120 billed monthly.
Sematext Experience
- Annual discount
10% off with annual billing
The pricing page has a Monthly/Annually switch that shows 10% off, taking the Experience starting price from $9 to $8.10 a month.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Raygun Real User Monitoring or Sematext Experience?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Sematext Experience is cheaper to start with: $9 a month, against $80 a month for Raygun Real User Monitoring. Raygun Real User Monitoring starts at $80 per month for 100,000 sessions, billed annually ($120 billed monthly), and Sematext Experience starts at $9 per month, billed monthly ($8.10 billed annually).
Which has a free plan, Raygun Real User Monitoring or Sematext Experience?
As of Nov 13, 2026, neither Raygun Real User Monitoring nor Sematext Experience has a free plan. Both have a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.