Let’s be honest—monitoring your Rails app shouldn't require a PhD in configuration or a budget that rivals your hosting costs.
I’ve been there. You deploy a new feature, something breaks, and you're scrambling. You look for an APM solution and you're hit with two options: enterprise tools that cost hundreds of dollars a month, or open-source solutions that are a nightmare to set up.
That’s why I built Dead Bro.
I wanted a tool that felt like it was part of the Rails ecosystem, not just slapped on top of it. I wanted something that I could drop into a Gemfile and forget about until I needed it. And most importantly, I wanted it to be accessible to every developer, from the indie hacker shipping their first MVP to the seasoned engineer scaling a production app.
What is Dead Bro?
Dead Bro is a dedicated Application Performance Monitoring tool specifically designed for Ruby on Rails. It’s not a generic monitor trying to be everything to everyone. It speaks Rails. It understands Active Record, it gets the asset pipeline, and it knows exactly what a Rails developer looks for when things go south.
The Launch Feature Set: Everything You Need, Nothing You Don't
For version 1.0, we focused on the core essentials—the metrics that actually help you fix bugs and optimize code. Here is what is available right now:
- Real-Time Rails Monitoring: Watch your app’s heartbeat. We track response times, memory usage, database queries, and cache performance as they happen.
- Zero-Config Error Tracking: No complex setup wizards. Dead Bro automatically catches exceptions, grabs the stack trace, captures the user context, and alerts you.
- Deep-Dive Analytics: We don't just show you "slow requests." We drill down into SQL query performance, cache hit rates, and memory patterns so you can optimize the bottleneck, not just the symptom.
- Slack Integration: Because nobody checks their email for server alerts anymore. Get notified instantly where your team already works.
- Environment Awareness: Development, Staging, Production—Dead Bro automatically detects the environment and dashboards everything separately.
What Makes Dead Bro Stand Out?
The APM market is crowded, so why use this one?
- It’s actually built for Rails. Many APMs treat Ruby as an afterthought. Dead Bro uses
apm_bro, a native gem that hooks directly into Rails' internal instrumentation. This means lighter overhead and more relevant data. - It is dead simple. The goal was "install and go." Step 1: Add
gem 'dead_bro'to your Gemfile. Step 2:bundle install. Step 3: Drink coffee while the data rolls in. - It’s Free. No trial limitations. No "contact sales for pricing." No hidden costs. You get full access to the comprehensive monitoring suite from day one.
Give It a Shot
Dead Bro is live and ready to handle your traffic. Whether you are debugging a memory leak or just want to see how your latest deploy is performing, we've got you covered.
