---
title: "The Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine | Grafana Alloy documentation"
description: "Learn how to run the Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine with the CLI, the OpenTelemetry Collector Helm chart, a service installation, or a custom build"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# The Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine

The OTel Engine is an OpenTelemetry Collector distribution embedded in Alloy. It runs standard OpenTelemetry Collector YAML configuration without translating it to Alloy syntax.

You can run it with the CLI, the OpenTelemetry Collector Helm chart, or a service installation. To run a Default Engine pipeline inside the OTel Engine, add the Alloy Engine extension to any of these. You can also build your own binary with the OpenTelemetry Collector Builder.

To manage the OTel Engine configuration remotely, use the [`otel-supervisor`](../../reference/cli/otel-supervisor/) command. It runs the OTel Engine under an embedded OpAMP supervisor that receives the configuration from [Grafana Fleet Management](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/fleet-management/).

To learn when to use each engine, refer to [OpenTelemetry in Alloy](../../introduction/otel_alloy/).

> **EXPERIMENTAL**: OTel Engine is an [experimental](/docs/release-life-cycle/) feature. Experimental features are subject to frequent breaking changes, and may be removed with no equivalent replacement.
> 
> To maintain full compatibility of the OTel Engine with the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector and expose a compatible command line interface, the OTel Engine isn’t hidden behind a stability [flag](/docs/alloy/v1.20/reference/cli/run/).
> 
> Make sure that you understand the risks involved before using an experimental feature in your production environments.

- [Run the Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine with the CLI](/docs/alloy/v1.20/set-up/otel_engine/cli/)
- [Run the Grafana Alloy Engine extension](/docs/alloy/v1.20/set-up/otel_engine/engine-extension/)
- [Run the Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine with the OpenTelemetry Collector Helm chart](/docs/alloy/v1.20/set-up/otel_engine/helm/)
- [Run the Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine with service installations](/docs/alloy/v1.20/set-up/otel_engine/service-installations/)
- [Build a custom Grafana Alloy binary with the OpenTelemetry Collector Builder (OCB)](/docs/alloy/v1.20/set-up/otel_engine/custom-builds/)

## Next steps

- [`otel` command reference](../../reference/cli/otel/)
- [`otel-supervisor` command reference](../../reference/cli/otel-supervisor/)