Session replay
for developers.
Compare Samelogic, LogRocket, and Sentry by how you capture an issue, inspect the evidence, and keep an investigation moving.
Compare the workflowsCapture the issue in front of you.
Start a recording in Chrome, repeat the steps, then replay and inspect the affected element.
Starts when you record. Earlier browsing is not captured.
Investigate what users experienced.
Explore captured sessions with console, network, and performance context alongside product analytics.
Requires application SDK setup and collection rules.
Put an error back in context.
Follow a captured session alongside errors, traces, console output, and network activity.
Requires the Replay integration and sampling configuration.
Written by Samelogic Documentation checked See sources
What do you
have to work with?
A replay is useful when it gives you enough context to decide what to investigate next.
“I can make the bug happen.”
Use Samelogic to record the lead-up, replay the failure, and inspect the affected element. Give the receiving developer the steps you took and what you expected.
“It happened to a user.”
Start with a session your application captured. Evaluate LogRocket for replay alongside product analytics, or Sentry for replay connected to errors and traces.
These workflows can work together: investigate the captured session, then record a focused reproduction.
Compare the context.
And the capture limits.
All three support replay and inspection. How the evidence is collected—and what is available beside it—shapes your investigation.
| What to compare | | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How capture startsWhat needs to be running? | You start and stop a recording in the desktop Chrome extension. No application SDK is needed. | Initialize the SDK in your application to collect user sessions. | Enable Replay in the browser SDK and configure session and error-based sampling. |
| Debugging contextWhat can you investigate? | Replay the browser steps you captured and inspect the element at a particular moment. | Review session activity with console logs, network requests, errors, and performance data. | Connect the replay timeline with errors, traces, network requests, and console output. |
| Element inspectionCan you look beyond the picture? | Select an element in replay to review selectors, attributes, and styles. Add a note at that moment. | Open the recorded DOM in browser developer tools; use Inspect to explore element interactions. | Inspect an element’s HTML, attributes, and position in the recorded DOM tree. |
| CoverageWhat could be missing? | Anything before recording began. This is deliberate capture, not continuous production monitoring. | Activity that was not collected by the SDK or was excluded by its configuration. | Sessions outside the configured sample, plus content excluded by privacy settings. |
| PrivacyWhat will the recipient see? | Input values are masked by default. Other page content can appear; review the recording and access before sharing. | Configure DOM exclusions and sanitizers for network data and application state. | Text and inputs are masked and media blocked by default, with configurable masking and blocking rules. |
Compare a real issue in your own environment. Capture fidelity, available diagnostics, retention, and access depend on configuration and plan. Review the documentation
A useful replay leaves
less to reconstruct.
- 01
Include the lead-up.
Start from the state before the failure. Include the role, navigation, and repeated action that change the result.
- 02
Find the first mismatch.
Pause where the page stops behaving as expected. Inspect the affected element and connect it to the available diagnostics.
- 03
Let a teammate continue.
Share with the intended access. Ask someone else to find the failing step and explain their next investigation step.
Playback shows recorded activity. It does not restore your live backend or prove that a fix works.
Before you
choose.
What is session replay for developers?
Session replay reconstructs captured browser activity so you can follow the steps around an issue. For debugging, evaluate the context beside the replay: the affected DOM element, errors, network activity, and what was or was not captured. Availability depends on the platform and its configuration.
Does Samelogic replace production session replay?
Samelogic starts when you deliberately record a browser flow. It cannot recover an earlier user session. Use it to capture an issue you can reproduce; evaluate SDK-based replay when you need to investigate captured production sessions. The workflows can complement each other.
Does replay reproduce the bug in a live environment?
Replaying recorded page activity is different from restoring a live application’s backend, permissions, and data. Use replay as evidence for investigation. A proposed fix still needs to be tested in the relevant environment.
Can I try Samelogic before creating an account?
Yes. Install CSS Selector & XPath Finder in desktop Chrome to try recording and local playback. An account is needed to save recordings to a workspace and share them; plan limits apply.
How we compared
Written by Samelogic using current product behavior and the vendor documentation linked here. Reviewed September 27, 2026. This is a workflow comparison, not a hands-on benchmark or an exhaustive market ranking.
Give the next developer
a place to begin.
Record the steps, inspect the moment it goes wrong, and bring the captured context into your team’s investigation.
CSS Selector & XPath Finder · For desktop Chrome.
Try local recording before creating an account.