Self-hosted 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 17 OpenTelemetry and telemetry pipeline tools. Of these, 14 are open source, 17 have a free plan and 17 can be self-hosted. Checked by hand on 30 September 2026.
- 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.
- 2
Bindplane
Telemetry pipeline built on OpenTelemetry: manages fleets of collectors from one console and filters, samples and routes logs, metrics and traces to any backend. Cloud or self-hosted.
- 3
Cribl
Telemetry pipeline (Cribl Stream, Edge, Search and Lake) that filters, reshapes and routes logs between collectors and destinations such as Splunk or S3 to cut volume.
- 4
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.
- 5
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.
- 6
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.
- 7
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.
- 8
NXLog
Log collection agent and platform strong on Windows event logs: collects, converts and forwards logs to SIEM and observability tools. A free Community Edition is also available.
- 9
Odigos
Uses eBPF to add OpenTelemetry tracing to applications on Kubernetes without code changes and sends the data to any backend.
- 10
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.
- 11
OpenTelemetry Collector
Vendor-neutral agent and gateway that receives, processes and exports traces, metrics and logs to one or more backends.
- 12
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.
- 13
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.
- 14
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.
- 15
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.
- 16
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.
- 17
Vector
Rust observability pipeline from Datadog that collects, transforms and routes logs and metrics between sources and sinks, run as agent or aggregator.
Side by side
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Open source | Self-hosted | OTLP in and out | Logs | Metrics | Traces | Transform and redact | Routing to many destinations | Durable buffering | Sampling or volume reduction | Central fleet management |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| Bindplane | Free plan | 10 collectors, 100 GB/day, 1 project | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cribl | Free plan | Up to 1 TB/day | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fluent Bit | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| Fluentd | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | - |
| Grafana Alloy | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Honeycomb Refinery | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | - | - | Yes | - | - | - | Yes | - |
| NXLog | Free plan | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Odigos | Free plan | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes |
| OpenTelemetry | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| OpenTelemetry Collector | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI) | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | - | Yes | - |
| rsyslog | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | - | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| syslog-ng | Free plan | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| Telegraf | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
| Tenzir | Free plan | Community edition: 1 TB/day ingress | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - | Yes | Yes |
| Vector | Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | - |
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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