$0
License cost
100% open source, CNCF-hosted
Report
Should I Use OpenTelemetry?
The open standard for telemetry
Depends
DependsAdopt it if you run distributed systems and have engineers to own instrumentation and pipelines.
Free open-source telemetry standard — powerful, but not a product. You still pay for backends and pay heavily in setup time.
Confidence: High
$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
Value for money
4
Software free; backend bills scale fast
Ease of use
2
Steep setup; beginners struggle in forums
Feature depth
5
Traces, metrics, logs across all languages
Security posture
3
2024 audit published; recurring DoS CVEs
Pros
Cons
Gotchas
- highInstrumentation is free; ingestion and storage are not — one team pays $2,400/month sampling 1%³
- highCollector defaults aren't production-safe; high availability must be configured or things break
- mediumSecurity depends on your Collector configuration — secure setup is on you
- mediumChoosing a backend/vendor is the hard part; that's where costs and lock-in creep in
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
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)”
“I Was Wrong: OpenTelemetry is Great, the ecosystem around it is the problem”
“OpenTelemetry worth the effort?”
Alternatives
Compare OpenTelemetry with each alternative.
SigNoz
OpenTelemetry-native all-in-one backend with UI included
OpenTelemetry vs SigNozPrometheus
Metrics-only; simpler if monitoring is all you need
OpenTelemetry vs PrometheusJaeger
Focused distributed tracing; lighter footprint
Datadog
Commercial observability with zero-setup dashboards; ingests OTel
OpenTelemetry vs DatadogFull analysis
Based on 20+ public sources. OpenTelemetry is an open standard, not a paid product — costs come from backends, storage, and engineering time.
Sources
- OpenTelemetry — official siteopentelemetry.ioofficial
- OpenTelemetry | CNCFcncf.ioofficial
- OpenTelemetry Costs Us $2400/Monthmedium.comreview
review
- Who uses Open Telemetry? : r/devopsreddit.comreview
- OpenTelemetry Security Audit Publishedopentelemetry.iosecurity
- CVE-2026-40894: OpenTelemetry dotnet DoSsentinelone.comsecurity
- Companies that use OpenTelemetry — TheirStacktheirstack.comnews
- Is OpenTelemetry Free to Use?harrisonclarke.comreview
- OpenTelemetry Security: How To Keep Telemetry Data Safesolarwinds.comsecurity
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