You do not have an SRE team. You are the SRE team.
Scout gives development teams of 2 to 20 people the monitoring they need without the complexity they do not. Errors, logs, and traces in one place. Set up in 5 minutes. No dedicated DevOps required.
Enterprise APM tools are not built for small teams
Datadog, New Relic, and Dynatrace were designed for organizations with dedicated platform engineering teams, SRE rotations, and DevOps budgets. They are powerful tools. They are also complex, expensive, and built for a team structure you do not have.
If your developers own the code, the deploys, and the on-call rotation, you need monitoring that respects that reality. Something that gives you answers fast without requiring a certification to use.
What small teams actually need
Everything in one place
Errors, logs, and traces in a single view. When something breaks, you see the error, the request trace, and the surrounding logs together. No switching between three tools to reconstruct one incident.
Set up in 5 minutes
Add the gem or package, set your API key, deploy. Scout auto-instruments your application with zero configuration. No YAML files to tune, no agents to babysit, no dashboards to build before you see data.
Problems found for you
Scout automatically detects N+1 queries, memory bloat, and slow endpoints. You do not have to go hunting. The issues surface with the code location and performance impact so you know what to fix first.
AI-assisted debugging
Connect your AI coding assistant to Scout via MCP server and ask it about your production errors, traces, and performance data in natural language. Or use the Scout CLI to query everything from the terminal.
Pricing that makes sense
Transaction-based tiers with no seat licenses, no per-host fees, and no surprise bills when traffic spikes. Your monitoring cost does not grow faster than your business.
Ruby, Python, PHP, Elixir
Deep framework support for Rails, Django, Flask, FastAPI, Laravel, and Phoenix. Scout understands your ORM, your template engine, and your background job processor.
What teams like yours say
Our engineers would say we have done several massive N+1 optimizations thanks to Scout. We made our requests 70% faster by identifying common bottlenecks in all requests thanks to Scout's detailed breakdowns.
For over a year, we have utilized Scout, and it has been pivotal in enhancing the stability and efficiency of our backend, ultimately resulting in an enhanced user experience for millions of users.
- SOC 2 Type II certified
- No credit card required
- Month-to-month, cancel anytime
- Available on Heroku
- Available on AWS Marketplace
Scout vs the enterprise alternatives
Datadog felt like overkill
Datadog has 500+ integrations, infrastructure monitoring, security scanning, and network monitoring. If you just need to know why your Rails or Django app is slow, that is a lot of product to navigate. Scout gives you errors, logs, and traces for your application without the platform overhead.
New Relic gets expensive
New Relic charges per GB of data ingested plus per-user fees. As your team and traffic grow, the cost grows in ways that are hard to predict. Scout uses transaction-based tiers with unlimited users and applications included on every plan.
Sentry's APM is shallow
Sentry added performance monitoring, but it was built to support error analysis rather than stand on its own. You will not get automatic N+1 detection, memory bloat identification, or integrated log management. Scout's APM is deeply auto-instrumented for your framework's ORM, background jobs, and template rendering out of the box.
You want one tool, not three
Most small teams end up stitching together an APM, an error tracker, and a log aggregator. That is three vendors, three bills, and three sets of dashboards to check during an incident. Scout replaces that with one tool that shows you errors, logs, and traces together.
Add Scout to Your App
With monitoring that "just works" for Rails, Django and more, get running in minutes with Scout's streamlined setup. No extra code needed - just deploy our agent and start getting insights in 5 minutes.
Get started in under 3 minutes with our easy to install Ruby agent.
Install our gem. In your Gemfile:
gem 'scout_apm'Shell:
bundle installDownload your customized config file, placing it at config/scout_apm.yml.
Deploy.
Get started in under 3 minutes with our easy to install Python agent.
Install the package:
pip install scout-apmConfigure in your settings.py (Django):
# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
"scout_apm.django", # should be listed first
# ... other apps ...
]
# Scout settings
SCOUT_MONITOR = True
SCOUT_KEY = "[AVAILABLE IN THE SCOUT UI]"
SCOUT_NAME = "A FRIENDLY NAME FOR YOUR APP"Alternatively, use environment variables: SCOUT_MONITOR, SCOUT_NAME, SCOUT_KEY.
Deploy. Data appears in the Scout UI within approximately 5 minutes.
Get started in under 3 minutes with our easy to install PHP agent.
Install the package:
composer require scoutapp/scout-apm-laravelOptionally install the PHP extension:
sudo pecl install scoutapmConfigure in your .env file and deploy.
Get started in under 3 minutes with our easy to install Elixir agent.
Add to your mix.exs and run mix deps.get:
{:scout_apm, "~> 2.0"}Download your customized config and place it at config/scout_apm.exs.
Add instrumentation to lib/your_app_web.ex:
defmodule YourApp.Web do
def controller do
quote do
use Phoenix.Controller
use ScoutApm.InstrumentationDeploy.
FAQ
Small Team Monitoring FAQ
What is the best APM for small development teams?
Scout Monitoring is built for development teams that do not have dedicated DevOps or SRE staff. It integrates errors, logs, and traces in one tool with automatic N+1 query detection, memory bloat detection, and 5-minute setup. Pricing uses transaction-based tiers with unlimited users and no seat licenses.
What is the best monitoring tool for startups?
Scout Monitoring offers a free tier with 300,000 monthly transactions, error monitoring, and log management included. Setup takes 5 minutes with no credit card required. As your application grows, you upgrade to higher transaction tiers without changing tools or losing data.
Do I need a dedicated DevOps team to use Scout?
No. Scout is designed for teams where developers own the application and the monitoring. It auto-instruments your code, detects performance problems automatically, and surfaces issues with the code location and impact so you can fix them without specialized tooling knowledge.
How does Scout compare to Datadog for small teams?
Datadog is a comprehensive observability platform designed for enterprise DevOps teams. Scout is focused on application monitoring for development teams. If you need errors, logs, and traces for your web application without infrastructure monitoring, security scanning, or 500+ integrations, Scout provides what you need at a fraction of the complexity and cost.
What languages does Scout support?
Scout supports Ruby (Rails, Sinatra, Grape), Python (Django, Flask, FastAPI), PHP (Laravel, Symfony), and Elixir (Phoenix, LiveView). Each agent provides deep framework-specific instrumentation including automatic N+1 query detection in ActiveRecord, Django ORM, Eloquent, and Ecto.