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Lists / OpenTelemetry and telemetry pipelines

Open source OpenTelemetry and telemetry pipeline tools in 2026

Collectors, agents and pipelines that gather telemetry, reshape it and send it on, including the OpenTelemetry project. This list has 14 OpenTelemetry and telemetry pipeline tools. Of these, 14 are open source, 14 have a free plan and 14 can be self-hosted. Checked by hand on 30 September 2026.

  1. 1

    AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry

    AWS-supported distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector and SDKs, preconfigured to send traces and metrics to CloudWatch, X-Ray, Amazon Managed Prometheus and partner backends.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted OpenTelemetryPipelinesCloud
  2. 2

    Fluent Bit

    Lightweight C log and metrics processor from the Fluentd project, common as the node-level agent in Kubernetes. Ships to Loki, Elasticsearch, cloud logging and OTLP.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted LogsKubernetesOpenTelemetry
  3. 3

    Fluentd

    CNCF graduated log collector that reads, parses, buffers and forwards logs to hundreds of outputs through a plugin system. Written in Ruby and C.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted LogsKubernetes
  4. 4

    Grafana Alloy

    Grafana's OpenTelemetry Collector distribution with built-in Prometheus scraping and a pipeline configuration language; collects metrics, logs, traces and profiles. Replaces Grafana Agent.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted PipelinesOpenTelemetryMetricsLogs
  5. 5

    Honeycomb Refinery

    Open source tail-based sampling proxy for traces: buffers whole traces and keeps errors, slow requests and a sample of the rest before forwarding to Honeycomb.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted PipelinesTraces
  6. 6

    Odigos

    Uses eBPF to add OpenTelemetry tracing to applications on Kubernetes without code changes and sends the data to any backend.

    Free plan Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted TracesOpenTelemetryKubernetes
  7. 7

    OpenTelemetry

    CNCF project defining vendor-neutral APIs, SDKs, semantic conventions and the OTLP protocol for traces, metrics, logs and profiles, with auto-instrumentation for major languages.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted OpenTelemetryTracesMetricsLogs
  8. 8

    OpenTelemetry Collector

    Vendor-neutral agent and gateway that receives, processes and exports traces, metrics and logs to one or more backends.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted OpenTelemetryTracesMetricsLogs
  9. 9

    OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI)

    Zero-code eBPF instrumentation that produces traces and RED metrics for HTTP, gRPC, database and messaging calls from Linux processes. Started as Grafana Beyla and was donated to OpenTelemetry.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted OpenTelemetryTracesMetricsKubernetes
  10. 10

    rsyslog

    Default syslog daemon on many Linux distributions; also a high-throughput log pipeline that parses, filters and forwards logs to Elasticsearch, Kafka, files or remote syslog.

    Free Open source Self-hosted PipelinesLogs
  11. 11

    syslog-ng

    Long-running open source log collector and forwarder: receives syslog, files and journald, parses and filters messages, and sends them to files, databases, Kafka or SIEMs. Commercial editions exist.

    Free plan Open source Self-hosted PipelinesLogs
  12. 12

    Telegraf

    InfluxData's plugin-based agent that collects metrics and events from systems, services and APIs and writes them to InfluxDB, Prometheus and many other outputs.

    Free Open source (MIT) Self-hosted MetricsInfrastructure
  13. 13

    Tenzir

    Open source pipeline engine for security and log data: nodes collect, parse, normalise and route events with a pipeline language, managed from a hosted or self-run platform.

    Free plan Free: Community edition: 1 TB/day ingress Open source (BSD-3-Clause) Self-hosted PipelinesLogs
  14. 14

    Vector

    Rust observability pipeline from Datadog that collects, transforms and routes logs and metrics between sources and sinks, run as agent or aggregator.

    Free Open source (MPL-2.0) Self-hosted LogsMetrics

Side by side

Tool Pricing Free plan Open source Self-hosted OTLP in and outLogsMetricsTracesTransform and redactRouting to many destinationsDurable bufferingSampling or volume reductionCentral fleet management
AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-
Fluent Bit Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-
Fluentd Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYes--
Grafana Alloy Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Honeycomb Refinery Free Yes Yes Yes ---Yes---Yes-
Odigos Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYes-YesYes
OpenTelemetry Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-
OpenTelemetry Collector Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-
OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI) Free Yes Yes Yes --YesYesYes--Yes-
rsyslog Free Yes Yes Yes -Yes--YesYesYesYes-
syslog-ng Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-
Telegraf Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-
Tenzir Free plan Community edition: 1 TB/day ingress Yes Yes -YesYesYesYesYes-YesYes
Vector Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes-

Yes: confirmed in the tool's documentation. No: documented as not offered. -: not confirmed. Plans and prices change; check each tool's own site before you decide.

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