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OpenTelemetry Review

Depends

Should I use OpenTelemetry?

The open standard for telemetry - opentelemetry.io

· 1 month ago

Adopt it if you run distributed systems and have engineers to own instrumentation and pipelines. Skip it if you just need basic monitoring — a one-line logging library or an all-in-one backend is far easier.

Confidence

High. Based on 20+ public sources. OpenTelemetry is an open standard, not a paid product — costs come from backends, storage, and engineering time.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support qualityNo support data in sources
  • Security posture

Pricing

$0

OpenTelemetry (open source)

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes

Best for

  • Microservices teams needing distributed tracing
  • Multi-cloud orgs avoiding vendor lock-in
  • Kubernetes/CNCF shops with dev resources
  • Orgs standardizing telemetry across backends

Not for

  • Solo devs on one monolith — a logging library is enough
  • Teams wanting dashboards out of the box; no backend or UI included
  • Anyone unwilling to run and maintain a Collector pipeline
  • Startups needing observability today without engineering time

Gotchas - check before you buy

high

Instrumentation is free; ingestion and storage are not — one team pays $2,400/month sampling 1%

high

Collector defaults aren't production-safe; high availability must be configured or things break

medium

Security depends on your Collector configuration — secure setup is on you

medium

Choosing a backend/vendor is the hard part; that's where costs and lock-in creep in

Pros and cons

Pros

  • 100% free, open source, vendor-neutral standard
  • Avoids vendor lock-in across traces, metrics, and logs
  • Huge ecosystem of compatible backends and vendors
  • Widely adopted: 17,952 companies tracked using it
  • Third-party security audit published

Cons

  • Not a product: no storage, UI, or backend included
  • Backend and storage bills can explode unexpectedly
  • Setup effort high; 'worth the effort?' debates persist
  • Ecosystem complexity is the real cost, not licensing

Sources & method

- 10 sources - Actively maintained project with a published 2024 security audit, but several recent DoS CVEs in language components and the Collector.

official x2review x4security x3news x1
  • CVE-2026-40894: OpenTelemetry dotnet DoS, Excessive memory allocation causing denial of service.
  • CVE-2026-54285: opentelemetry-js Baggage DoS, Unbounded baggage input causing denial of service.
  • CVE-2026-33701: OpenTelemetry Java vulnerability, Reported vulnerability in the Java components.
  • CVE-2024-36129: Collector confighttp vulnerability, Security vulnerability in OTel Collector confighttp; project published guidance.

Key stats

  • Value for money: 4/5

    Rating

  • $0

    Starting price

  • 10

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 4/5. Software free; backend bills scale fast
  • Ease of use: 2/5. Steep setup; beginners struggle in forums
  • Feature depth: 5/5. Traces, metrics, logs across all languages
  • Support quality. No support data in sources
  • Security posture: 3/5. 2024 audit published; recurring DoS CVEs
  • $0 License cost 100% open source, CNCF-hosted
  • $2,400/mo Real-world bill example while sampling just 1% of requests
  • 17,952 Companies using it tracked by TheirStack
  • CNCF project Governance vendor-neutral, open standard

Pricing

OpenTelemetry (open source)

$0

  • APIs, SDKs, and Collector
  • Backend, storage, and UI self-hosted or bought separately

Security

Actively maintained project with a published 2024 security audit, but several recent DoS CVEs in language components and the Collector.

  • CVE-2026-40894: OpenTelemetry dotnet DoSExcessive memory allocation causing denial of service.⁷
  • CVE-2026-54285: opentelemetry-js Baggage DoSUnbounded baggage input causing denial of service.
  • CVE-2026-33701: OpenTelemetry Java vulnerabilityReported vulnerability in the Java components.
  • CVE-2024-36129: Collector confighttp vulnerabilitySecurity vulnerability in OTel Collector confighttp; project published guidance.

What users say

Developers value vendor neutrality but consistently debate whether the setup effort and ecosystem complexity are worth it.

“OpenTelemetry Costs Us $2400/Month (And We're Only Tracing 1% of Requests)”
Medium, engineering blog
“I Was Wrong: OpenTelemetry is Great, the ecosystem around it is the problem”
Medium, engineering blog
“OpenTelemetry worth the effort?”
Reddit, r/ExperiencedDevs
Full analysis

Based on 20+ public sources. OpenTelemetry is an open standard, not a paid product — costs come from backends, storage, and engineering time.

Free open-source telemetry standard — powerful, but not a product. You still pay for backends and pay heavily in setup time.

Methodology

Based on 20+ public sources. OpenTelemetry is an open standard, not a paid product — costs come from backends, storage, and engineering time.

Read how a report is made.

Sources

  1. OpenTelemetry — official siteopentelemetry.io
    official
  2. OpenTelemetry | CNCFcncf.io
    official
  3. OpenTelemetry Costs Us $2400/Monthmedium.com
    review
  4. OpenTelemetry worth the effort? : r/ExperiencedDevsreddit.com
    review
  5. Who uses Open Telemetry? : r/devopsreddit.com
    review
  6. OpenTelemetry Security Audit Publishedopentelemetry.io
    security
  7. CVE-2026-40894: OpenTelemetry dotnet DoSsentinelone.com
    security
  8. Companies that use OpenTelemetry — TheirStacktheirstack.com
    news
  9. Is OpenTelemetry Free to Use?harrisonclarke.com
    review
  10. OpenTelemetry Security: How To Keep Telemetry Data Safesolarwinds.com
    security

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