OpenTelemetry

Tracy is built on OpenTelemetry (OTel), the industry-standard framework for observability. This means your traces are compatible with a wide ecosystem of backends and tools.

Why OpenTelemetry?

Vendor-neutral and open source. OpenTelemetry is a CNCF project backed by major cloud providers and observability vendors. You're not locked into any specific backend — switch between Jaeger, Zipkin, Datadog, or any other OTel-compatible tool without changing your instrumentation code.

Unified observability. OTel provides a single set of APIs and SDKs for traces, metrics, and logs. This consistency simplifies your observability stack and reduces the cognitive overhead of working with multiple libraries.

Industry adoption. OpenTelemetry is rapidly becoming the standard for observability. Most modern observability platforms support OTel natively, and the ecosystem of integrations continues to grow.

Rich context propagation. OTel handles distributed context propagation across service boundaries, making it easy to trace requests as they flow through microservices, message queues, and async workflows.

Semantic conventions. Standardized attribute names and span structures mean your telemetry data is consistent and interoperable. Tools can understand your data without custom configuration.

Learn more

• OpenTelemetry Docs — Official documentation and getting started guides
• OpenTelemetry Java SDK — The SDK that Tracy uses under the hood
• Semantic Conventions — Standardized naming for spans, attributes, and metrics
• OpenTelemetry Collector — A vendor-agnostic proxy for receiving, processing, and exporting telemetry
• OTel Registry — Browse instrumentation libraries, exporters, and integrations
• CNCF OpenTelemetry Project — Learn about the project's governance and community