Instabug vs Firebase Crashlytics: Detailed Comparison for 2025 (With a Better Alternative)

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Crash reporting is a critical aspect for maintaining a stable and reliable mobile app. Whether you're a solo developer or a part of a large engineering team, knowing when, why, and how your app fails is essential to delivering a seamless user experience.

Two of the most widely used tools in this space are Firebase Crashlytics and Instabug.

• Firebase Crashlytics : Firebase Crashlytics is a lightweight, developer-focused tool from Google. It's known for providing real-time crash reports, stack traces, and user impact metrics - all tightly integrated with the Firebase ecosystem.
• Instabug : Instabug, on the other hand, offers a broader platform. In addition to crash reporting, it includes user feedback, performance monitoring, and session-level insights, making it a more holistic solution for teams looking to improve overall app quality.

While both serve the purpose of identifying and resolving issues, their scope and approach differ significantly.

And then there’s Zipy - a new generation tool that combines crash reporting with full user session visibility, console and network logs, and real-time error tracking. It's designed not just to report issues, but to help teams resolve them faster by providing complete context.

In this blog, we’ll compare Instabug and Firebase Crashlytics across key areas - features, developer experience, performance tracking, and more - and explain where Zipy fits in as a more complete and future-ready alternative.

Why Crash Reporting Isn’t Just About Crashes Anymore

Traditionally, crash reporting tools were built to do one thing well - tell you when your app crashed and where in the code it happened. For many teams, that was enough.

But app development has changed.

Today’s users expect seamless performance. They don’t just notice crashes - they notice slow screen loads, unresponsive taps, freezes, and unexpected behaviors that never throw a crash but still ruin the experience.

This means developers and product teams need more than just crash logs. They need:

• Context around what the user was doing before the issue occurred.
• Insights into performance bottlenecks like ANRs (App Not Responding) or frozen frames.
• Real-time visibility into errors that don’t necessarily crash the app but still cause friction.
• The ability to replay what the user experienced - from screen to screen - to replicate and resolve issues faster.
  

In short, crash reporting in 2025 isn't just about identifying crashes anymore.
It's about understanding the entire user journey, capturing non-fatal issues, and empowering teams to deliver better experiences with every release.

This is where tools like Instabug begin to expand the scope - and where platforms like Zipy take things even further.

Meet the Contenders: Instabug and Crashlytics

When it comes to crash reporting and debugging tools, two names consistently show up on developer shortlists: Firebase Crashlytics and Instabug.

At first glance, both tools help you do the same thing - detect when your app crashes and gather data to fix it. But dig a little deeper, and you'll see that their approach, features, and use cases are quite different.

Firebase Crashlytics : 

Crashlytics is a core part of the Firebase platform by Google, which means it integrates tightly with other Firebase services like Analytics, Remote Config, and Performance Monitoring. It focuses on:

• Detecting and grouping crashes
• Providing stack traces and logs
• Highlighting how many users are affected
• Prioritizing issues based on impact

Its strength lies in simplicity, speed, and tight Firebase integration, especially for Android and iOS apps built with Firebase tools. Best of all, it’s completely free.

Instabug : 

Instabug takes a broader approach. While it offers crash reporting, it’s positioned as a full app quality monitoring platform. Alongside crash analytics, Instabug offers:

• User feedback tools (like bug reporting and surveys)
• Session replay to visualize what led to a crash
• Performance monitoring (slow app launches, ANRs, frozen frames)
• Network and device logs, screen transitions, and repro steps

Instabug is designed not just for developers, but also for QA teams, product managers, and customer support - anyone involved in improving app experience.

And a Surprise Third Option: Zipy

While Instabug and Firebase Crashlytics are widely used and well-established, they still leave developers asking important questions after a crash:

• What exactly did the user do before this happened?
• What was on the screen?
• What did the network or console logs look like at that moment?

That’s where Zipy steps in - and changes the game.

Zipy is not just a crash reporting tool. It’s a complete user experience visibility platform. Instead of just showing you that something went wrong, Zipy shows you how and why it went wrong - with full, actionable context.

With Zipy, you get:

• Real-time session replay, so you can watch exactly what the user saw and did
• Automatic error and exception tracking, even for non-crash issues
• Console logs, network requests, and performance data, all tied to the user session
• Instant visibility into ANRs, frontend errors, API failures, and more

What makes Zipy different is its focus on the user journey, not just the crash.

It helps devs, QA, and product teams debug collaboratively - and resolve issues faster, without needing the user to explain a thing.

So, “Zipy isn’t just an alternative - it’s a modern solution for teams who want full clarity, not just crash reports.”

Crash Reporting Basics: What Do These Tools Actually Do?

When you think about crash reporting, what comes to mind?

For many teams, it’s something simple: a tool that tells you when your app crashes, shows you the stack trace, and maybe tells you how many users were affected. And for a long time, that was enough. But today, crash reporting is no longer just about catching crashes - it's about understanding what actually happened before, during, and after the issue.

Think about it this way: A user launches your app, taps around, maybe switches screens a few times, opens a modal, then suddenly - crashes. The app closes. Just like that. Now, without the right tools, what are your options?

You might get a crash report with the error and a stack trace. Great - but what did the user do to get there? What was their intent? Were there signs of a problem building up - maybe a failed API call or an unresponsive button? And what if the issue wasn’t a crash, but something just as harmful - like the app freezing, throwing a frontend error, or not responding for 10 seconds?

This is where the difference between basic crash tracking and context-rich debugging becomes painfully obvious. Let’s explore how Firebase Crashlytics, Instabug, and Zipy tackle this - and what it means for your team when you're staring down a production bug with zero reproduction steps.

Firebase Crashlytics : What kind of crash data does It provide?

Firebase Crashlytics is probably one of the names that comes up when you look for a reliable crash reporter. And there’s a good reason for that. It’s easy to integrate (especially for Android apps), it’s lightweight, and it gives developers what they expect right out of the box: real-time crash data, stack traces, and user impact metrics.

You get crash grouping, breadcrumbs, device info, etc to sort through what matters most. It even alerts you when new issues start appearing after a new release - super helpful when trying to catch regressions early. But here’s the problem: it ends there.

Crashlytics tells you what crashed and where. But it doesn’t tell you why. You don’t know what the user was doing when it happened. You can’t see their exact path through the app. You have no idea what failed silently before the crash - like a timeout, a broken component, or an unresponsive screen. And you certainly can’t replay the session or look at the frontend logs unless you’ve manually added custom logging - and let’s be honest, how many dev teams keep that logging consistent across every screen?

So, ask yourself: when something breaks, do you want to spend hours trying to reproduce it... or would you rather see it instantly?

Crashlytics is perfect for teams who just need basic crash awareness, don’t want to pay, and already use Firebase for other services. But if you need deeper insights or broader coverage, its limitations will show quickly.

Instabug : Does It Solve the Gaps in Crashlytics?

This is where Instabug often comes in as the “next step up.”

While Crashlytics gives you system-level crash data, Instabug provides something closer to a QA tool built for live apps. You’re not just getting crash logs - you’re getting session context, repro steps, network activity, device and OS details, and even user-submitted bug reports complete with screenshots and screen recordings.

So now, imagine the same crash scenario from earlier: user taps a few screens, opens a modal, and the app crashes. With Instabug, you don’t just get the error log. You get the user’s journey - which screen they were on, what actions they took, what network calls were being made, what logs were generated, and potentially even a visual recording of what happened on their screen. Sounds like everything you’d want, right?

But while Instabug is powerful, most of its advanced features - like screen recordings and performance monitoring - sits behind paid plans. For growing teams or startups, this might be hard to justify, especially when there’s another tool that combines all of this (and more) into one streamlined experience.

Zipy : So What Makes It Different And Smarter?

This is where Zipy starts to feel less like a tool and more like a window into your user’s experience.

Imagine this: a crash happens - or maybe not even a crash, just a frustrating UI bug, a lag, or a missing button click. You open Zipy, and you can watch the entire user session from start to finish, just like a screen recording - but even better, because it’s interactive. You can click on events, trace logs, inspect network calls, view console errors, and see exactly where the problem occurred - without writing a single log or asking the user to explain what went wrong. That’s not just convenient - that’s game-changing.

Zipy ties everything together:

• Frontend and backend logs, synced to the session timeline
• Real-time crash and error detection
• API calls, responses, and failures, with full payloads
• Performance issues like ANRs, slow screens, or network latency
• And most importantly - a full view of what the user actually experienced

Instead of bouncing between Crashlytics for crashes, your logging platform for errors, Instabug for session info, and your analytics tool for user behavior - Zipy gives you all of it, unified in one place. That means less guessing, faster fixes, and happier users.

So here’s the question: When you’re troubleshooting a high-impact issue, do you want a few breadcrumbs… or the whole trail?

If the answer is the whole trail - full context, logs, behavior, and visual journey - then Zipy isn’t just a better tool. It’s the tool built for the way modern teams actually debug.

TL;DR : Feature Comparison Table

Side-by-Side Feature Comparison

Crash Reporting : Are You Just Logging Errors - or Actually Solving Them?

Let’s start with the core of it all: crash reporting.

It sounds simple, right? Your app crashes, and you want to know what went wrong so you can fix it. But if you’ve ever tried to debug a production crash using only a stack trace, you already know how frustrating that process can be.

Crash reporting isn’t just about knowing something broke - it’s about knowing what, where, and most importantly, why it broke. And the tools you use can either make that process fast and clear… or painfully slow and vague.

So the question is: how much context do you really get when your app crashes? Let’s look at how each tool handles it.

Firebase Crashlytics : Great for Crashes - Not So Great for Context 

Firebase Crashlytics gives you the essentials. When your app crashes, Crashlytics catches it, sends the crash report to the Firebase console, and shows you the stack trace and the device info. It even groups similar crashes and alerts you when a new issue appears after a release. It’s fast, free, and widely trusted - especially among Android teams.

But here’s where it falls short. Crashlytics only captures crashes - not soft errors, UI bugs, or performance bottlenecks that can still ruin user experience. And beyond that initial crash report, there’s no deeper context. You don’t see what the user was doing before the crash, which screens they visited, what buttons they tapped, or whether a network call silently failed and triggered the crash. You’re working with breadcrumbs - not the whole trail.

So, here’s a critical question to ask yourself: When you see a stack trace, can you confidently say: “Yes, I know exactly what the user did that caused this crash”? Or do you find yourself guessing, reproducing, and debugging blindly?

Instabug: Richer Crash Reports, Designed for Teams Who Want More Clarity

Instabug takes crash reporting to the next level by not just showing what happened, but giving you clues around how it happened. When a crash occurs, Instabug captures:

• The crash log and stack trace
• User steps leading up to the crash
• Screen transitions
• Network requests and console logs
• And optionally, user-submitted feedback or screenshots

This makes a huge difference. Now you’re not just seeing that something failed - you’re getting a reconstructable timeline. You can trace the user’s path through the app, check the backend activity, and understand if a particular interaction led to instability.

Instabug’s crash reporting is great for cross-functional teams: developers, QA engineers, product managers. Everyone gets a shared view of what went wrong. But, depending on your plan, features like session replay or advanced performance monitoring may require upgrading to a higher tier.

So, here’s a common question: Does there exist a tool which provides all necessary features to try out in their trial and free plan ? Does such a tool exist where you can first use these features then decide whether you want to go for a higher plan ? 

And here, Zipy - a modern tool for Error tracking and crash reporting comes into play. 

Zipy: From “Something Broke” to “Here’s Exactly Why” - in Seconds

Now let’s talk about Zipy - because this is where crash reporting goes from useful to powerful. Zipy doesn’t just capture the crash event. It captures everything that happened around it - like a black box for every user session. When a crash occurs, Zipy links it directly to:

• A complete session replay, so you can watch exactly what the user did
• Console logs, network requests, and API errors, all visible on a synced timeline
• Environment data - OS, device, browser, location, memory, and more
• And even previous non-fatal errors or warnings that occurred before the crash

So instead of reading a crash log and trying to imagine what happened, you literally watch it unfold. This isn’t just helpful - it’s transformational. It removes friction from debugging and gives your entire team - dev, QA, support, and product - a single source of truth.

You don’t have to ask users what went wrong. You don’t have to guess which part of the flow caused the issue. You just open Zipy, watch the session, and start fixing. And that leads to one final question - the one that should define how you approach crash reporting: Is your crash tool helping you see the full story - or just the last sentence?

ANR Reporting: Are You Catching the Crashes That Don’t Crash?

Not every failure throws an exception. Some of the most frustrating and damaging issues in mobile apps aren’t crashes at all - they’re the ones where nothing happens. The screen freezes, buttons stop responding, and the user stares at the app... waiting. This is what we call an ANR - "Application Not Responding."

And here’s the tricky part: these don’t always get flagged in traditional crash reports. Yet they’re often the real reason users abandon your app, leave negative reviews, or never return.

So let’s break this down: What does your current tool tell you about frozen UIs, laggy transitions, or stalled screens? Can you see what caused the ANR? Can you reproduce it? Can you even detect that it happened? If you’re unsure - this comparison might be an eye-opener.

Firebase Crashlytics: Covers the Basics - But Only on Android

Firebase Crashlytics does include ANR tracking, but it’s limited. It only supports ANR detection on Android, and even there, the visibility is shallow. Yes, you’ll be notified that an ANR happened, and you’ll see some device logs and stack traces, but you won’t know much beyond that.

You won’t see what screen the user was on. You won’t know what triggered the freeze. And unless you’re already collecting a ton of custom logs, you’re mostly guessing.

In the Firebase docs, ANRs are treated like a side feature - not a core part of the crash reporting workflow.

So now the question to you is: “How often have users complained that your app is “slow” or “stuck,” but your crash tool showed no red flags at all?” If that’s happened even once - you might not be catching the full picture.

Instabug: Monitoring Freezes and ANRs Across Both Platforms

Instabug takes a much broader approach. It doesn’t just catch crashes or ANRs - it’s built to monitor the overall performance health of your app.

Instabug takes a much broader and platform-aware approach to performance monitoring. It doesn’t just track crashes - it monitors the overall responsiveness of your app, even in those tricky cases where the app feels broken but doesn’t technically crash. 

On Android, Instabug captures true ANRs (Application Not Responding errors) - when the main thread is blocked and the system detects that your app is unresponsive for too long. Instabug logs the event, along with a stack trace, so you can see what part of the app was frozen and what thread caused the delay.

On iOS, since the platform doesn’t have native ANR detection, Instabug introduces App Hangs monitoring. These are detected when the app becomes unresponsive for 3 seconds or more - for example, due to a heavy render, a stuck animation, or a blocking operation on the main thread. While it’s not called an “ANR,” the user impact is very real, and Instabug captures these moments automatically.

However, this level of visibility typically comes with premium plans, and while performance issues are surfaced clearly, they may not always be tied directly to a replayable user session. You may need to correlate logs or steps manually, depending on your plan and setup.

Zipy: Seeing the Freeze, Tracing the Cause, Fixing It Fast

Now here’s where Zipy really separates itself. With Zipy, you don’t just detect that an ANR happened - you see exactly when, where, and why it happened. Because every ANR is captured in the context of the user session.

That means when your app freezes, Zipy:

• Records the session replay, so you see what the user was doing
• Captures network calls, frontend logs, console errors, and API delays
• Shows all of this in a single timeline, where the ANR moment is marked and traceable

So you’re not asking “did something freeze?” - you’re watching it happen. You can literally jump to the second where the app stopped responding, see what was on the screen, inspect the logs, and get to the root cause in minutes. Even better - Zipy tracks non-crash freezes, like a modal that never loads or a slow API blocking the UI thread. These are the subtle killers that most crash tools don’t even see. And now… a question worth pausing for: If a user rage-quits your app because of a freeze - and you didn’t even know it happened - how do you prevent it from happening again?

Session Replay - Can You Debug What You Can’t See?

Picture this: a user reports a bug. They say the app “glitched out” after they tapped a button, but they can’t explain exactly what happened. You open your crash reporting tool - and... there’s nothing. No crash, no error log, just silence. Now what?

Do you start trying to reproduce it on your own device? Add more logging and wait for it to happen again? Ask the user to describe it in more detail, hoping they remember? Or… do you watch the session yourself and see what went wrong in real time? That’s the power of session replay - and it might be the single most underrated tool in your debugging workflow.

But not every platform gives you this power. Let’s explore.

Firebase Crashlytics: The Blind Spot Between Crashes

This one’s quick: Firebase Crashlytics does not support session replay - at all. There’s no way to view a user’s screen, see what they tapped, or visualize how they moved through the app. You can set custom logs or breadcrumbs if you remember to, but that’s manual and error-prone. And when issues happen that don’t produce crashes or obvious errors - you’re basically flying blind. Crashlytics tells you the symptom, but not the story.

So let’s pause here and ask: If a user hits a critical bug, and it doesn’t throw a crash or log - how would you even know it happened? If you don’t have session replay, the answer might be: you don’t.

Instabug: Visual Playback for Premium Plans

Instabug does support session replay - but it’s a feature that comes with its premium offerings. When enabled, Instabug can record the user’s screen as they interact with your app, giving you a visual trace of what happened before a crash or bug. It also captures user steps, like screen transitions and tap gestures, which is super helpful for QA teams trying to recreate bugs. It’s a powerful feature - and it adds a ton of value when paired with logs, crash reports, and user feedback.

However as per me, features like session replay are too basic to be charged for. For free plan, as well as trial plan I think some number of sessions must be given to users because “a crash reporting tool is incomplete without session replay”

Zipy: Watch the Session, Trace the Error, Solve It - All in One Place

This is where Zipy takes session replay to another level. With Zipy, every user session is automatically recorded - no manual logging required. But it's not just a screen recording. It's a fully interactive debugging timeline.

Here’s what you get with every session:

• A pixel-perfect visual replay of exactly what the user did
• Every click, scroll, tap, or input field interaction
• Console logs, network requests, and errors, all synced to the replay
• Indicators of crashes, ANRs, or frontend issues - as they happened
• The ability to jump to the exact moment something broke

This isn’t just about watching - it’s about understanding. Zipy connects the dots between user behavior and system behavior in a way that traditional tools simply don’t. You don’t need to guess what caused a bug. You don’t need to ask the user for steps. You just hit play - and start solving.

That’s the difference between knowing what happened and knowing why it happened. Do you still think: you can really debug what you can’t see ?

Input Masking - How Safe is the User Data You're Logging?

Let’s shift gears for a second. Up until now, we’ve talked about capturing everything: crashes, freezes, logs, user sessions, and every single interaction inside your app. That’s great for debugging. But here’s the catch: What happens when those “interactions” include sensitive user data?

Think about it. Your users are entering:

• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Passwords
• Credit card info
• Personal health or financial details

If your debugging tool captures everything - are you accidentally storing data you shouldn't? This is where input masking becomes absolutely critical. It’s not just a privacy feature - it’s a compliance requirement, especially if you're working in regulated industries like healthcare, finance, etc. So here’s the question: Are you absolutely sure that your current crash or session replay tool isn’t logging sensitive user data?

If you hesitated for even a second… you might be putting your users - and your business - at risk. Let’s see how the three platforms handle it.

Firebase Crashlytics: Manual Work, Maximum Risk

Firebase Crashlytics gives you crash logs - and if you’re not careful, that includes whatever data was in memory at the time. There’s no built-in input masking. If you want to prevent sensitive data from being sent to Firebase, you need to manually scrub those values in your code before logging them or throwing exceptions. That’s on you - and it’s easy to miss.

This means Crashlytics works fine for basic apps, but for anything handling user credentials, payments, or private info, it can quickly become a liability.

Instabug: Configurable Input Masking - If You Set It Up

Instabug takes privacy more seriously here. It offers a built-in feature to mask sensitive input fields, like passwords or credit cards, so they don’t appear in session replays or logs. You can configure which UI elements to ignore or blur, and Instabug will exclude those from the captured data. It’s a solid feature - and absolutely essential for teams working under GDPR, HIPAA, or similar compliance frameworks. But remember: you still need to configure it correctly. It doesn’t guess what’s sensitive - that’s your job to define.

So now ask yourself: How confident are you that every input field across every screen of your app has been masked properly?

Zipy: Privacy by Design - With Smart Input Masking

Zipy also takes a proactive approach to privacy. From the moment you install it, Zipy allows you to mask or exclude any sensitive data you want - both visually (in session replays) and under the hood (in logs or analytics).

You can:

• Mask specific input fields
• Exclude entire elements or screens
• Anonymize session data where needed

This means you're not only staying compliant - you're building trust with your users by knowing that their data isn’t exposed, even during debugging. And the best part? Zipy makes this setup simple and transparent, so your team doesn't need to overthink it or worry about accidental data capture.

AI Summary - Can Your Tool Explain Bugs Without You Watching Every Session?

Let’s be real - logs are helpful. Session replays are powerful. Crash traces are essential. But here’s the problem: they all still require human time. Someone has to open the tool, sift through the data, jump through sessions, read the logs, understand the flow - just to figure out what went wrong.

But what if your tool could do that part for you? What if it could look at everything that happened - the user actions, the logs, the crashes, the failed network calls - and just tell you the story?

That’s what AI summaries are aiming to solve: taking the flood of raw debugging data and turning it into something readable, human, and useful - without wasting hours. So here's the real question: How much time is your team spending just figuring out what the issue is - before even starting to fix it?

Let’s compare how these tools are stepping into the AI space.

Firebase Crashlytics: AI is Here - But Still Early

Until recently, Crashlytics was a completely manual tool - offering crash reports, grouped stack traces, and device info, leaving it entirely up to developers to dig into the details. But now, Firebase has introduced AI assistance to help streamline debugging. This feature can generate summaries of crash events, explaining what likely caused the issue in plain language. It also offers suggestions for potential fixes, helping reduce the time it takes to triage and understand new crashes.

It’s a promising addition - especially for developers who don’t want to dive into raw stack traces every time a new issue pops up. But there are still a few things to consider:

• This AI feature is limited to crash events only - it doesn’t cover performance issues, frontend errors, or non-crash bugs.
• It’s stack trace-focused - it doesn’t consider session behavior, UI interactions, or user paths in its summaries.
• It doesn’t include session replay, user journey, or environmental factors - meaning you still might miss key context.

So yes, AI has entered the picture in Crashlytics - and it’s a welcome step forward. But if your team is trying to understand why things break (not just where), you might still find yourself filling in the blanks.

Zipy: AI That Saves You Hours - Without Watching a Single Replay

This is where Zipy changes the game. Zipy automatically generates an AI summary for every issue - whether it’s a crash, console error, failed network call, or a performance glitch. It processes:

• The user journey
• Session replay metadata
• All logs and stack traces
• Network activity
• System environment data

And then it gives you a plain-language summary of what happened - like having a debugging assistant who watched the whole session for you and just wrote the highlights. You don’t have to guess. You don’t have to scrub through the replay. You just open the summary and get the full picture - in seconds.

Repro Steps - Are You Still Asking Users “Can You Show Me What Happened?”

Let’s be honest - one of the most painful parts of debugging is figuring out how to reproduce the issue. You’ve seen the crash. You’ve read the logs. But you still have to ask that question we’ve all asked too many times: “Can you show me what you did to make this happen?”

Sometimes the user remembers. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they say it “just happened.” And you’re left guessing, trying to recreate it on your own device. But what if your tool could tell you the steps the user took, automatically? No more guesswork. No more back-and-forth. Just clear, reliable repro steps - every time.

Let’s look at how each tool handles it.

Firebase Crashlytics: No Repro Steps - You're on Your Own

Firebase Crashlytics tells you where the crash happened - but not how the user got there. You’ll see the stack trace, the device info, the crash grouping… and that’s it. There’s no record of what screens the user visited, what buttons they tapped, what triggered the error, or how long the session lasted. Unless you’ve manually added custom breadcrumbs or logging - you're working from just one angle: the code.

That leaves a big gap in the story. So ask yourself: If your app crashed while the user was switching screens or submitting a form - would your platform help you understand that journey?

Instabug: Automatic Repro Steps - A QA Favorite

This is where Instabug really shines. Instabug automatically captures user steps leading up to a crash or bug report. These include:

• Screen transitions
• Taps and gestures
• Navigation flow
• Device state

It builds a timeline of events, giving you a clear view of what happened before the issue, not just the moment it occurred. This makes it easier to reproduce bugs, especially for QA teams and developers who weren’t directly involved in the testing. These repro steps are part of Instabug’s standard crash and bug report dashboards, and you can even enrich them further with custom metadata.

 Zipy: See the Repro Steps. Watch the Repro Steps. Solve Instantly.

Zipy goes beyond just listing repro steps - it lets you watch the full sequence unfold. When an error or crash is captured in Zipy, you get:

• A playable session replay, showing every screen and action the user took
• A timeline of user steps, complete with screen views, tap events, scrolls, input fields, and more
• Each event synced to console logs, network calls, and errors

That means you can go from “what happened?” to “I see exactly what broke, when, and why” - in minutes. You don’t just know the steps. You can literally watch them, jump to the error point, and debug in context.

So here’s a question worth pausing on: “If you had a full replay of every bug - with user steps, logs, and errors all in one place - how much time would you save per issue?”

Pricing - Are You Paying for Power, or Just Unlocking Basic Visibility?

Choosing a crash reporting or debugging tool isn’t just about features - it’s about value. You can find a free tool that gives you the basics. You can pay for a tool that promises more. But in both cases, the real question is: What are you actually getting for what you pay?

And just as importantly… what’s missing unless you upgrade?

Let’s take a look at how pricing works across Firebase Crashlytics, Instabug, and Zipy - and what you’re really unlocking with each.

Firebase Crashlytics: Free Forever - With Basic Crash Reporting

Firebase Crashlytics is part of the Firebase Spark Plan, which is entirely free.

You get:

• Real-time crash reporting
• Stack traces and crash grouping
• Crash frequency insights
• User impact tracking
• Basic integration with Firebase Analytics

That’s it. And honestly - that’s enough for a lot of teams. If you’re building an MVP, running a side project, or working entirely within Firebase’s ecosystem, Crashlytics offers a ton of value without costing you a cent. But here’s what’s not included:

• Session replay
• Performance monitoring
• User steps or repro flows
• Frontend error tracking
• Visual debugging

So before calling it “free,” ask yourself: What’s the cost of not seeing what happened before a crash? How many hours are you spending chasing issues your tool didn’t catch?

Instabug: Powerful - but You’ll Pay for It

Instabug’s pricing is feature-gated and tiered. There’s no truly “free forever” plan - instead, you get a free trial, after which you’ll need to upgrade to keep using it.

Zipy: Transparent, Scalable, and Generous Free Plan

Final Thoughts on Pricing

• Crashlytics is free, but limited. You’ll save money - but might spend time guessing.
• Instabug is powerful, but you’ll pay early and often more for the good stuff.
• Zipy gives you deep visibility - including AI and replays - from day one, with room to scale affordably.

So here’s the final question to ask yourself before you choose: Are you choosing your tool based on what’s cheapest… or based on what will help your team move faster and fix smarter?

Final Verdict - Which Tool Should You Choose?

We’ve gone deep. Crash reports, session replays, ANRs, AI summaries, input masking, pricing - all the things that matter when you’re deciding which debugging and monitoring tool to trust with your production app.

So here we are, at the final question: What kind of visibility does your team actually need - and how fast do you need to move?

Let’s break it down one last time.

Choose Firebase Crashlytics if:

• You're already fully invested in Firebase
• You just need basic crash reporting - and not much else
• You’re okay without session replay, frontend error tracking, or performance metrics
• Your priority is free, simple, and integrated

Crashlytics is a solid choice for lightweight needs - especially early-stage apps or MVPs. But as soon as your app scales or your bugs get trickier, you might start feeling the limitations.

Choose Instabug if:

• You need a complete app quality platform (not just dev-focused)
• Your team includes QA, product, or support roles that benefit from user feedback
• You’re willing to pay for deeper features like session replay and performance monitoring
• You don’t mind navigating through different dashboard views for full context

Instabug is robust and full-featured, but it comes at a cost . It works best for teams that want flexibility across mobile monitoring and user experience.

Choose Zipy if:

• You want a unified debugging experience - not a patchwork of tools
• You need session replay, crash reports, logs, and errors in one place
• You care about speed, clarity, and solving issues proactively
• You want real value from day one - even on the free plan

Zipy isn’t just a crash reporter. It’s a complete window into the user’s journey, offering everything from visual replays to console logs, AI summaries, and deep insights - all wrapped in a timeline that tells the whole story.

If your goal is to debug faster, collaborate better, and fix issues before users even report them, then Zipy is the smarter, modern choice.

So, what kind of team are you?

• One that wants to log the crash?
• Or one that wants to understand the whole experience?

Because logs are just the start, visibility is what actually drives better apps.

Frequently Asked Questions: 

Q.1> Is Firebase Crashlytics enough for crash reporting?

=> Only if you’re okay with stack traces and no session context or replay.

Q.2> Does Instabug offer session replay in its free plan?

=> No, session replay is available only in premium plans.

Q.3> Can I use Zipy for free with session replay and logs?

=> Yes, Zipy’s free plan includes session replay, logs, and crash context.

Q.4> Do any of these tools support AI-powered bug summaries?

=> Only Zipy and Crashlytics (limited to crashes); Zipy covers all issue types.