GCheckOps
Grafana Tempo
Grafana Tempo is an AGPL-3.0, high-volume, minimal-dependency distributed tracing backend that stores traces in object storage and integrates with Grafana, Prometheus and Loki.
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Introduction
Grafana Tempo is a high-volume, minimal-dependency distributed tracing backend. It needs only object storage to operate, which keeps costs low at scale, and it integrates with Grafana, Prometheus (exemplars) and Loki for jumping between metrics, logs and traces. It accepts OpenTelemetry, Jaeger and Zipkin formats.
The source code is at grafana/tempo on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 licence, with about 5,600 stars; the most recent commit was on 11 November 2026.
Features
- Object storage: S3, GCS, Azure Blob and others.
- Protocol support: OTLP, Jaeger and Zipkin.
- TraceQL: Query language for traces.
- Grafana integration: Explore traces alongside metrics and logs.
- Metrics from traces: Generate RED metrics; see docs.
Pros
- Free to use: Open source under AGPL-3.0.
- Maintained: Commits as recent as 11 November 2026.
- Community: About 5,600 GitHub stars.
Cons
- AGPL licence: Check obligations if you modify and offer it as a service.
- Operations: Scaling microservices mode needs expertise.
Usage and Links (Example)
Run Tempo with the example Docker Compose setups in the repository, send OTLP traces to it and add Tempo as a Grafana data source.
Resources:
Pricing
Grafana Tempo is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence.
Recommended for?
- Grafana stack users adding tracing.
- High-volume tracing at low storage cost.
- Not a fit if you need a standalone UI without Grafana.
Conclusion
Tempo is a cost-efficient tracing backend that fits naturally into the Grafana stack.
Alternatives
Other tools on CheckOps that cover similar ground. Open a page, or compare one with Grafana Tempo side by side.
JJaegerJaeger is the CNCF's Apache-2.0 distributed tracing platform; v2 is built on the OpenTelemetry Collector and accepts OTLP traces, with a UI for searching traces and analysing service dependencies.Compare with Grafana Tempo
ZZipkinZipkin is an Apache-2.0 distributed tracing system that gathers timing data to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures, with a UI for finding and viewing traces.Compare with Grafana Tempo
GGrafana LokiGrafana Loki is an AGPL-3.0 log aggregation system, "like Prometheus, but for logs", that indexes labels rather than full text to keep costs low.Compare with Grafana Tempo- GGrafanaGrafana is an open-source dashboard for metrics, logs, and traces. Grafana Cloud adds a hosted stack with a free tier and paid plans.Compare with Grafana Tempo
SSigNozSigNoz is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform with logs, metrics, traces, alerts and dashboards in one place; open-source self-hosted, plus SigNoz Cloud with a 30-day trial and usage pricing from $49.Compare with Grafana Tempo
HHoneycombHoneycomb is an observability platform built on high-cardinality, event-based data and distributed tracing, with BubbleUp, SLOs, AI agents and MCP; free tier with 20M events a month and Pro from $150/month.Compare with Grafana Tempo