OpenTelemetry
Vendor-neutral standard for traces, metrics, and logs
OpenTelemetry is profiled here as a Observability tool for engineering teams. Read about features, pricing, and how it compares to related options in the tools directory.
Description
OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework formed in 2019 from the merger of OpenTracing and OpenCensus, and a CNCF project second in activity only to Kubernetes. It defines a common set of APIs, SDKs, and a collector for generating and exporting telemetry, so instrumentation is written once and sent to any compatible backend. Most LLM observability tools now emit OpenTelemetry data, which lets AI traces flow into existing monitoring systems. Broad vendor support means instrumentation written once can move between backends, which protects teams from monitoring lock-in. Emerging GenAI conventions let LLM traces carry token counts and model names into existing observability systems.
Key Capabilities:
Unified APIs and SDKs for traces, metrics, and logs
Collector for receiving, processing, and exporting telemetry
Auto-instrumentation for common languages and frameworks
Vendor-neutral export to any compatible backend
Semantic conventions including emerging GenAI attributes
Apache 2.0 license with broad language support
Alternative tools
- HoneyHive
Evaluation and observability platform for AI agents
- Sentry
Error tracking and performance monitoring for developers
- SigNoz
Open-source, OpenTelemetry-native observability platform
- Datadog
Unified observability for metrics, traces, and logs
- Arize AX
Enterprise platform for AI observability and evaluation
- Prometheus
Open-source metrics monitoring and time-series database