Relay Modes

Relay can operate in one of several major modes, and it is critical to understand the modes prior if you are configuring the Relay server rather than using the default settings.

The mode is stored in the configuration file, which contains the relay.mode field. This field specifies the mode in which Relay will run: managed or proxy. The Relay mode controls whether or not Relay obtains project settings for events.

In Sentry, event processing is configured according to both project and organization settings. Some settings, such as privacy controls, are set at the organization level, then inherited by all projects in that organization; other settings are specified per project. For Relay, events are processed according to the inherited project settings to which the event is sent.

Configuration for Relay is refreshed in regular intervals by polling Sentry. Sentry does not need line-of-sight to your Relays. See Configuration Options regarding configuration of intervals, timeouts, and retries.

Managed Mode

Managed is Relay's default mode. Because settings are obtained from Sentry, authentication is required in this mode. If authentication fails, no events will be accepted by Relay.

As Relay receives events from your applications, it will request project settings from Sentry to process the events. If Sentry is unable to provide the settings for a particular project, all data for that project will be discarded.

To activate managed mode, set this configuration:

relay:
  mode: managed

Proxy Mode

Proxy mode forwards all events with minimal processing and does not receive any project settings from Sentry.

To activate proxy mode, set this configuration:

relay:
  mode: proxy

Static Mode

Static mode has been deprecated as of Relay version 25.9.0. Please use managed or proxy mode instead. When switching to managed mode don't forget to migrate any data scrubbing rules in your config directory by [configuring them in the Sentry UI](/security-legal-pii /scrubbing/).