Grafana Tempo
Grafana Tempo is an open-source distributed tracing backend.
Platform availability
Available on 2 of 9 platforms
Health score?A 0-100 score computed nightly from four factors: maintained (40%: recent commits and steady activity), popular (25%: GitHub stars, log scale), easy to install (20%: platforms, install notes, setup guides, Docker image) and light to run (15%: minimum RAM, ARM support). When the source code has been checked, a fifth factor, security check (20%: automated scan for committed secrets, unsafe desktop-app settings, known-vulnerable dependencies and project hygiene; any serious finding caps it at 20), is added. Factors without data are left out and the rest are rescaled.
80/100 Excellent
- Maintained
- 100last commit 16 days ago
- Popular
- 755,499 GitHub stars
- Easy to install
- 452 install platforms, install notes, Docker image
- Light to run
- No data
Based on 3 of 4 factors.
Availability: platform listings confirmed today, links checked 17 days ago
- GitHub stars
- 5,499
- Open issues
- 198
- Last commit
- 2026-09-29
- Latest release
- v3.0.3
- License
- AGPL-3.0
- Activity
- steady
Checked 16 days ago - source: GitHub (grafana/tempo)
Resources & Compatibility
ARM (e.g. Raspberry Pi) is supported.
Checked 17 days ago - source: Docker Hub image tags and published docs
First-install notes
- Install it inside your code project Tempo is a date-formatting library you add to a web or Node project, not a standalone server app. Run the npm install command in your project folder so your code can use Tempo’s date functions. source
- No ports or containers are needed You don’t need to open network ports or make a container for Tempo; it runs as code inside your application. Skipping this avoids waiting for a web address that will never appear. source
Fetched 16 days ago - each note links to its source
Variants
Alternatives (6)
- BareTail
- Datadog - Datadog Agent is an on-host monitoring agent that collects metrics, logs, and traces from hosts, containers, and Kubernetes clusters and se…
- Graylog - Graylog is a centralized log management platform built on open standards for capturing, storing, and analyzing terabytes of machine data in…
- Honeybadger - Honeybadger is an application health monitoring tool built by developers for developers.
- LogExpert - LogExpert is a Windows tail program (a GUI replacement for the Unix tail command).
- LogViewPlus - Looking for a better way to view log files?
Checked 14 days ago - source: AlternativeTo
Common questions
Which tracing protocols can Tempo ingest?
Tempo can ingest batches in Jaeger, Zipkin, Kafka, and OpenTelemetry formats. It buffers those batches before writing them to storage.
Does Tempo require Elasticsearch or Cassandra?
Traditional tracing tools may require a database like Elasticsearch or Cassandra, but Tempo requires only object storage to operate.
What query language does Tempo use for trace queries?
Tempo implements TraceQL, a traces-first query language inspired by LogQL and PromQL. It supports targeted queries and UI-driven analyses.
Does Tempo work with Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki?
Tempo is deeply integrated with Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki.
Where do I look if my Tempo data source in Grafana is not working?
The Tempo data source troubleshooting guide covers common issues with configuring or using the data source in Grafana. It includes issues related to connecting Grafana to Tempo and using the data source features.
Answers sourced from github.com, grafana.com, grafana.com
Community
- r/selfhosted on Reddit: Tempo - August Update: A Birthday Present ... (reddit)
- Tempo - August Update: Always Improve : r/selfhosted - Reddit (reddit)
- Sharing Tempo: A Lightweight, Open-Source Music Client for ... - Reddit (reddit)
- Tempo - An open source music client for Subsonic built ... - Reddit (reddit)
- Tempo - An open source music client for Subsonic built ... - Reddit (reddit)
- Is it worth it? : r/tempofitness - Reddit (reddit)
Collected 9 days ago - public community threads