What is OpenTelemetry Collector used for?

OpenTelemetry Collector is a vendor-agnostic service that receives, processes and exports traces, metrics and logs so one agent can feed many observability back-ends. It is a good fit for central telemetry pipeline for many services, switching observability vendors without re-instrumenting, and collecting Prometheus and Jaeger data in one agent.

Is OpenTelemetry Collector open source?

Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector and is written mainly in Go.

Is OpenTelemetry Collector free?

Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host OpenTelemetry Collector?

Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is OpenTelemetry Collector an alternative to?

OpenTelemetry Collector is an open-source alternative to Cribl and Mezmo. Other open-source alternatives to Cribl include Grafana Alloy, Vector and Telegraf.

Is OpenTelemetry Collector actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to OpenTelemetry Collector was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.162.0, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 7.6k stars on GitHub.

OpenTelemetry Collector: open-source alternative to Cribl

About OpenTelemetry Collector

This entry covers the OpenTelemetry Collector, the component of the OpenTelemetry project that handles telemetry data in transit. It is a vendor-agnostic implementation for receiving, processing and exporting telemetry, so teams do not need to run separate agents or collectors for each open-source telemetry format such as Jaeger or Prometheus when sending data to several open-source or commercial back-ends.

The project's stated objectives are to be usable, with sensible default configuration and support for popular protocols, performant and stable under varying loads, observable itself, extensible without touching the core code, and unified, with a single codebase that can run as an agent or a collector for traces, metrics and logs. Documentation covers getting started, configuration, security and monitoring.

The Collector is written in Go, licensed under Apache-2.0 and is part of the CNCF ecosystem, with a special interest group that meets weekly. You deploy it yourself next to your applications or as a central gateway. It suits platform and SRE teams standardizing telemetry pipelines.

Key features

Receives telemetry in many protocols
Processes and transforms traces, metrics and logs
Exports to open-source and commercial back-ends
Runs as an agent or a gateway
Extensible through components
Sensible default configuration

Good fit for

→Central telemetry pipeline for many services
→Switching observability vendors without re-instrumenting
→Collecting Prometheus and Jaeger data in one agent

Built with: Go
Tags: opentelemetry; telemetry; observability; traces; metrics; logs; cncf; collector; golang

OpenTelemetry Collector: questions and answers

What is OpenTelemetry Collector used for?: OpenTelemetry Collector is a vendor-agnostic service that receives, processes and exports traces, metrics and logs so one agent can feed many observability back-ends. It is a good fit for central telemetry pipeline for many services, switching observability vendors without re-instrumenting, and collecting Prometheus and Jaeger data in one agent.
Is OpenTelemetry Collector open source?: Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector and is written mainly in Go.
Is OpenTelemetry Collector free?: Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host OpenTelemetry Collector?: Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is OpenTelemetry Collector an alternative to?: OpenTelemetry Collector is an open-source alternative to Cribl and Mezmo. Other open-source alternatives to Cribl include Grafana Alloy, Vector and Telegraf.
Is OpenTelemetry Collector actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to OpenTelemetry Collector was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.162.0, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 7.6k stars on GitHub.