How Bugfender's remote logging and crash reporting tool works for mobile and web apps, pricing tiers, key features, pros, cons and frequently asked questions.
Bugfender's origin story is unusually practical: it began as an internal tool built by Mobile Jazz, a Barcelona-based mobile development consultancy, to solve a problem the consultancy's own engineers kept running into on client projects -- a bug reported by a real user that could not be reproduced locally because there was no visibility into what actually happened on that device. Rather than keeping the tool in-house, Mobile Jazz spun it out as Bugfender in 2015, and it has since grown from an internal utility into a standalone commercial product used by mobile and web development teams well beyond its original consultancy.
The core mechanic remains the same as when it started: a lightweight SDK integrated into a mobile or web app streams application logs, custom events, and device context to Bugfender's cloud dashboard in near real time, so a developer can search for a specific user's session -- often identified by a device ID, user ID, or support ticket reference -- and see exactly what the app was doing leading up to a reported problem, without needing physical access to that device.
At its base, Bugfender is a remote log viewer: every log line an app would normally write to a local device console is instead streamed to Bugfender's servers, tagged with device and session metadata, and made searchable through a web dashboard. On top of that logging foundation, paid plans add crash reporting to automatically flag when and where an app crashed, and end-user feedback collection to let users attach comments or screenshots directly to a session, giving support and engineering teams richer context than a bug report alone.
Higher tiers add operational and enterprise controls: fine-grained team permissions to control who can view logs for which apps, S3-based long-term log archiving beyond the standard retention window, API access and webhooks to pipe log events into other systems, and, at the top Premium tier, single sign-on, a formal uptime SLA, and invoice-based billing options aimed at larger organizations with procurement requirements.
Bugfender prices primarily on log volume and retention rather than per-seat licensing, which is a deliberate choice: since debugging often requires input from several engineers, support staff, and QA testers looking at the same session logs, charging per user would work against the collaborative way the tool is actually used. Instead, plans scale from a free tier (100K daily log lines, 24-hour retention) through Team, Pro, and Premium tiers that each raise the monthly log volume ceiling, extend retention up to 30 days, and add operational features like fine-grained permissions, archiving, and SLAs, with additional log volume beyond a plan's reserved amount billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
This pricing shape makes Bugfender a natural fit for mobile-first teams -- consumer apps, IoT companion apps, and field-service apps -- where a meaningful share of bugs only manifest on specific devices, OS versions, or network conditions that are difficult to reproduce in a test lab. It is a less obvious choice for teams whose primary debugging need is already well served by a centralized backend logging or APM stack, since Bugfender's value is concentrated specifically in client-side, device-level visibility.
Bugfender is used to capture and search application logs from real user devices remotely, helping developers diagnose bugs and crashes that happen in production and cannot be reproduced locally.
Yes, Bugfender offers a free plan with 100,000 daily log lines, 24-hour log retention, and support for up to 2,000 devices, with unlimited team members and apps included even on the free tier.
Bugfender provides native SDKs for major mobile platforms and for web applications, letting teams add remote logging across their mobile and web app portfolio.
Bugfender prices primarily on monthly or daily log volume and retention window rather than per user seat, with paid plans starting around $39/month and scaling up through Pro and Premium tiers for higher volume, longer retention, and enterprise features.
Yes, crash reporting is included starting on the paid Team plan, automatically surfacing crashes alongside the surrounding log context for faster debugging.
Yes, Bugfender offers a licensed on-premises deployment option for organizations that need to keep log data within their own infrastructure for compliance or data residency reasons.
Bugfender was originally built as an internal tool by Mobile Jazz, a Barcelona-based mobile app development consultancy, before being spun out as a standalone commercial product in 2015.
Additional logs beyond a plan's reserved monthly volume are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis rather than being blocked, so logging is not interrupted during volume spikes.