Glitchless vs Firebase Crashlytics: game observability versus mobile crash reporting

The Glitchless team · November 3, 2026 · Checked against Firebase's docs, pricing and release notes, and Google Play's Android vitals docs on November 3, 2026

Firebase Crashlytics is free, mature crash reporting for mobile games. Through the Unity SDK or Firebase's own Android and Apple SDKs, it groups crashes, Android ANRs and native NDK crashes into issues, with symbols, and alerts you by email, Slack, Jira or PagerDuty. It works alongside Google Analytics, which adds funnels, retention and store purchases, and Performance Monitoring, which measures app speed. All three are no-cost on every Firebase plan.

It's built for phones. The Unity SDK reports crashes only from Android, iOS and tvOS builds, there's no official Unreal or Godot SDK, and Firebase's C++ SDK has no Crashlytics. Performance Monitoring has no Unity or C++ SDK, and it counts slow and frozen frames per app screen rather than timing a game's frames. None of it can be self-hosted.

Glitchless measures how a game runs and plays on Unreal, Unity, Godot, GameMaker and the web, on PCs and phones: every frame, the cause of each stutter, errors with the events before them, where players quit, and bug reports from inside the game. Its MCP server and playtest bots let a coding agent fix a problem and check the fix. For a mobile game, the two fit together: native crashes in Crashlytics, performance and play in Glitchless.

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Side by side

Feature	Glitchless	Firebase Crashlytics
Engines
Unreal Engine	5.7 and 5.8 plugin	No official SDK; Firebase's C++ SDK has no Crashlytics
Unity	6.3 LTS and later	Official SDK, Unity 2021 LTS and later; Android, iOS and tvOS builds
Godot	4.5 and later	No official SDK
Web games (Three.js, Phaser, Babylon.js, PlayCanvas)	Yes	Analytics; Performance Monitoring (beta); Crashlytics in public preview since October 30, 2026
GameMaker	2024.2 and later	No Firebase SDK; GameMaker's own extension covers Android and iOS
Windows, Mac and Linux builds	Yes	Mac only, through the native Apple SDK; nothing in Unity or C++ desktop builds
Performance and crashes
Frame times from players' devices	Every frame, merged across players	Slow and frozen frames per screen, in native Android and Apple apps only
Each stutter's likely cause	Shader and PSO compiles, GC, loads, streaming	No
Errors and crashes	With callstacks and the events before	Crashes, Android ANRs and non-fatal errors, with logs, keys and Analytics breadcrumbs
Native crash dumps and symbol upload	No	Android NDK and Unity IL2CPP crashes with symbol upload; Apple symbols upload at build
Multiplayer: ping, packet loss, matches, dedicated servers	Ping and loss by region, each match from every side, server tick time	HTTP request times and success rates; no ping, packet loss or matches
Players
Custom events and funnels	Yes	Up to 500 event types; funnels of up to 10 steps in Google Analytics
Retention (D1, D7, D30)	With install mode	Retention report in Google Analytics
Revenue and purchases	Yes	Google Play and App Store purchases logged automatically
Revenue from RevenueCat or Stripe	Both, read only, on Glitchless Cloud	No
Store reviews and store vitals (Steam, Google Play, App Store)	Reviews by build; Play and App Store vitals next to ours	No; Android vitals and reviews stay in Play Console
Level death heatmaps	Yes	No
In-game bug reports with a screenshot	Yes	Invited Android testers only (App Distribution, beta), with a screenshot
Session replay	Event timeline and positions, not video	Analytics events before a crash; no replay
Keeps test devices, testers and bots out of player numbers	Yes	Crashes filter by Google Play track; Analytics can drop debug-mode traffic
Player accounts, saves and leaderboards	No	Through other Firebase products: Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Storage
A/B tests and remote config	No	Remote Config with A/B Testing built in; no-cost to 100,000 fetches a day
Agents
MCP server for coding agents	25 tools (22 hosted)	Local, in the Firebase CLI: Crashlytics issues and events; nothing for Analytics or Performance Monitoring
Autoplay runs that check a fix	Web games; any build can measure itself	Test Lab game loops on Android devices; Test Lab shuts down September 30, 2027
Alerts, sharing and export
Alerts (Slack, Discord, email)	Discord, Slack or email, counted in players	Email; Slack, Jira and PagerDuty for crashes; anything else through Cloud Functions (Blaze plan)
Read-only link to a dashboard	One board, no sign-in	No; viewers need a role in the Firebase project
Raw data export (CSV, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, warehouse)	CSV; Datadog or OpenTelemetry on paid plans	BigQuery for all three; Cloud Logging for crashes
How long detail is kept	14 days on Free, 90 on Indie, 400 on Studio	Crashes 90 days, performance 60, Analytics detail 2 or 14 months
Running it
Open source	MIT	SDKs Apache 2.0; the service is closed
Self-host	Docker or Node, no other services	No
Free hosted tier	5,000 play sessions a month, 14 days of data	Crashlytics, Analytics and Performance Monitoring are no-cost on every plan
Paid hosted plans from	$19 a month	Not needed for these three; Blaze bills extras such as BigQuery and Cloud Functions

Which one should you choose?

Choose Firebase Crashlytics if

Your game ships on Android and iOS and you want free, mature crash reporting, including native NDK and Unity IL2CPP crashes with symbols, and ANRs.
You already use Firebase for sign-in, Remote Config, A/B tests or push messages, and want crashes and analytics in the same console.
You want Google Analytics' funnels, retention and store purchase events at no cost, with the raw events in BigQuery.
You want crash alerts in Slack, Jira or PagerDuty without writing any code.

Choose Glitchless if

Your game is made in Unreal or Godot, or ships on Windows, Linux or Steam Deck, where Crashlytics doesn't run.
You want every frame timed on every player's device, and each stutter's likely cause: a shader or PSO compile, garbage collection, a load or a streamed level.
You want to see how people play: level death heatmaps, where they quit, ping and packet loss in multiplayer, and bug reports with a screenshot from any player, not only invited testers.
Your coding agent does the fixing: Glitchless's MCP server hands it performance, errors, players and store reviews, and playtest runs or a build measuring itself check its change.
You want to self-host on a small machine: one container with no other services.

Using both

Keep Crashlytics for native crashes and ANRs on Android and iOS, and Google Analytics if your marketing already runs on it. Add Glitchless for frame times, stutter causes, play and bug reports, and for Windows and Linux builds. A purchase can go to both: in Glitchless it's one track('purchase', …) call. We haven't yet tested Crashlytics and Glitchless in one Unity build, so if you run both, check that a test exception reaches each one.

Frequently asked questions

Is Firebase Crashlytics free?

Yes. Crashlytics, Google Analytics and Performance Monitoring are no-cost on both Firebase plans, Spark and Blaze. On Blaze you pay for what sits around them: BigQuery past its free sandbox, Cloud Functions for custom alerts, and Remote Config past 100,000 fetches a day. Glitchless Free covers 5,000 play sessions a month with 14 days of data, Indie is $19 a month, and the self-hosted server has no limits. See pricing.

Can Firebase show a game's frame rate?

Not directly. Performance Monitoring counts screens where more than half the frames took over 16 ms, or more than 0.1% took over 700 ms, assuming a 60 Hz display, and only in native Android and Apple apps: it has no Unity or C++ SDK. Google Play, outside Firebase, does more for Android games: Android vitals flags slow sessions, where over a quarter of frames miss a target such as 30 or 20 fps, and Android Performance Tuner sends frame and load times to Play Console. Glitchless times every frame on every platform it supports, names each hitch's likely cause, and can show Play's vitals next to its own numbers.

Does Crashlytics work for Unreal, Godot or PC games?

Firebase has no official Unreal or Godot SDK, and its C++ SDK leaves Crashlytics out. The Unity SDK sends crashes only from Android, iOS and tvOS builds: its desktop support is a beta for editor work, without Crashlytics or Analytics. A native Mac app can use the Apple SDK. Firebase's docs list no Windows, Linux or console support for Crashlytics. Glitchless has its own Unreal plugin and Godot addon, and runs in Windows, Mac and Linux builds as well as on phones.

Which has an MCP server?

Both. Firebase's runs locally through the Firebase CLI. For Crashlytics it reads issues and their events, keeps notes, builds reports and opens or closes issues. It also edits Remote Config, but has no tools for Analytics or Performance Monitoring. Glitchless's has 25 tools (22 hosted) covering findings, frame times, errors, funnels and death hotspots, bug reports, multiplayer, store reviews, revenue and playtest runs.

Can I self-host either one?

Not Firebase. Its SDKs are open source under Apache 2.0, but the service runs only on Google's servers, and Firebase says its local emulators aren't meant as self-hosted versions. Crashlytics, Analytics and Performance Monitoring have no emulator anyway. Glitchless is MIT and runs as one Docker container or one Node process with a file store.

Sources

Something out of date? Email support@glitchless.gg and we'll fix it. Glitchless isn't affiliated with Google; product names are their owners' trademarks.