OpenTelemetry Collector (OTEL) / OTLP Log Ingestion

OpenObserve supports the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) for logs, metrics and traces ingestion using the OpenTelemetry Collector. This page covers log ingestion; for metrics and traces, see the dedicated pages under Ingestion.

Choose a protocol

OpenObserve supports two OTLP transports:

OTLP/HTTP: simpler to set up, works through most proxies and firewalls.
OTLP/gRPC: higher throughput and lower per-request overhead; requires HTTP/2. Supported in single-node mode from v0.6.4 and distributed mode from v0.7.4.

Prerequisites

An OpenObserve instance (Cloud or self-hosted) and your login credentials.
The OpenTelemetry Collector installed.

Generating the Authorization header

The Authorization header is Basic <base64(email:password)>. Generate the value with:

echo -n 'your-email:your-password' | base64

OTLP/HTTP

Field	Value
Endpoint	`https://<your-openobserve-host>/api/<your-org>/v1/logs`
`Authorization` header	`Basic <base64(email:password)>`
`stream-name` header	`your-stream`

Example: OpenTelemetry Collector exporter

exporters:
  otlphttp/openobserve:
    endpoint: http://<your-openobserve-host>/api/<your-org>
    headers:
      Authorization: Basic cm9v****************************************Ng==
      stream-name: your-stream

No trailing slash on endpoint

The endpoint value must not end with a /. The collector appends /v1/logs itself, and a trailing slash will produce a 404.

OTLP/gRPC

The default gRPC port is 5081. You can change it using the ZO_GRPC_PORT environment variable.

Field	Value
Endpoint	`<your-openobserve-host>:5081`
`Authorization` header	`Basic <base64(email:password)>`
`organization` header	`your-org`
`stream-name` header	`your-stream`
`tls.insecure`	`false/true`

Example: OpenTelemetry Collector exporter

exporters:
  otlp/openobserve:
    endpoint: localhost:5081
    headers:
      Authorization: "Basic cm9v****************************************Ng=="
      organization: your-org
      stream-name: your-stream
    tls:
      insecure: true

Verify ingestion

After starting the collector, confirm logs are landing in OpenObserve:

Open the OpenObserve UI.
Click Logs in the left sidebar.
From the stream dropdown (top-left), select the stream you configured in stream-name.
You should see incoming log entries within a few seconds.

If no data appears, double-check that the endpoint has no trailing slash, the Authorization header is correctly base64-encoded, and the collector logs do not show export errors.

Next steps

Quickstart: get OpenObserve running if you haven't yet.
Logs UI: search and explore ingested logs.
Other log ingestion options: Vector, Fluent Bit, syslog, language SDKs.

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