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Grafana Cloud Enterprise Open source
Last reviewed: August 11, 2026

Jaeger data source

Jaeger is an open source, end-to-end distributed tracing system. Use the Jaeger data source to query and visualize traces, explore service dependencies, and correlate traces with logs and metrics.

Grafana ships with the Jaeger data source preinstalled in both Grafana OSS and Enterprise, so there’s nothing to install. It’s packaged as a standalone plugin that updates independently of Grafana releases. For more information, refer to Plugin updates.

Supported features

FeatureSupported
TracesYes
MetricsNo
LogsNo
AlertingNo
AnnotationsNo

Get started

The following documents help you set up and use the Jaeger data source:

Plugin updates

Starting with Grafana v13.2, the Jaeger data source is a standalone plugin, preinstalled in both Grafana OSS and Enterprise. This lets the data source receive updates independently of Grafana releases. Grafana automatically checks the plugin catalog and installs the latest version on each server restart.

To adjust this behavior:

  • Opt out of auto-updates: Set preinstall_auto_update to false in your configuration file.
  • Update manually: Update at any time from the Administration > Plugins page without restarting Grafana.

The standalone plugin requires Grafana 12.3.0 or later. The Jaeger data source bundled with Grafana 12.2 and earlier continues to work as before. These versions are unaffected by the change.

If you run Grafana 12.3.x through 13.1.x, you can install the standalone plugin from the plugin catalog to get the latest features before you upgrade to Grafana 13.2. To use the standalone plugin with these versions, add the following to your configuration file:

ini 
[plugin.jaeger]
as_external = true

[plugins]
; Install the latest version on startup:
preinstall_sync = jaeger
; Or install a specific version:
; preinstall_sync = jaeger@<version>

Additional features

After configuring the data source, you can:

  • Use Explore to query traces without building a dashboard.
  • Enable the Node Graph visualization to display trace structure and service dependencies.
  • Configure trace to logs to link spans to log entries in Loki or Splunk.
  • Configure trace to metrics to navigate from traces to related metrics.
  • Link to Jaeger traces from logs using derived fields or from metrics using exemplars.