---
title: "OpenTelemetry in Alloy | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn about the OpenTelemetry Engine, a bundled OpenTelemetry Collector distribution embedded within Grafana Alloy"
---

# OpenTelemetry in Alloy

Grafana Alloy combines the Prometheus-native, production-grade collection features of Alloy with the broad ecosystem and standards of OpenTelemetry. The Alloy OpenTelemetry Engine is a bundled OpenTelemetry Collector distribution embedded within Alloy. It lets you run Alloy as a fully compatible OTel Collector while retaining access to all Alloy features and integrations.

> **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/latest/reference/cli/run/).
> 
> Make sure that you understand the risks involved before using an experimental feature in your production environments.

## Terminology

Alloy supports two runtime engines and an extension:

- **Default Engine**: The default Alloy runtime and [configuration syntax](/docs/alloy/latest/introduction/get-started/syntax). This remains the default, stable experience with [backward compatibility](/docs/alloy/latest/introduction/introduction/backward-compatibility) guarantees for Alloy users.
- **OTel Engine**: The standard OpenTelemetry Collector runtime embedded within Alloy. It uses [upstream collector YAML configuration](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/configuration/) for pipelines and components.
- **Alloy Engine extension**: An OpenTelemetry Collector extension that lets you run both the Default Engine and the OTel Engine in parallel.

## Included components

The OTel Engine bundle includes:

- Standard components from the OpenTelemetry Collector core
- A curated selection of components from contributor repositories
- The `alloyengine` extension

Alloy v1.16.1 bundles versions v0.147.0 of OpenTelemetry Collector components. You can find more information about the bundled version in both the [OpenTelemetry Collector](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0) and [OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0) repositories.

The following sections list all included components:

Extensions

- [alloyengine](https://github.com/grafana/alloy/tree/main/extension/alloyengine)
- [basicauth](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/basicauthextension/README.md)
- [bearertokenauth](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/bearertokenauthextension/README.md)
- [headerssetter](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/headerssetterextension/README.md)
- [healthcheck](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/healthcheckextension/README.md)
- [jaegerremotesampling](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/jaegerremotesampling/README.md)
- [oauth2clientauth](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/oauth2clientauthextension/README.md)
- [pprof](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/pprofextension/README.md)
- [sigv4auth](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/sigv4authextension/README.md)
- [filestorage](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/extension/storage/filestorage/README.md)
- [zpages](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/extension/zpagesextension/README.md)

Configuration Providers

- [env](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/confmap/provider/envprovider/README.md)
- [file](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/confmap/provider/fileprovider/README.md)
- [http](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/confmap/provider/httpprovider/README.md)
- [https](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/confmap/provider/httpsprovider/README.md)
- [yaml](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/confmap/provider/yamlprovider/README.md)

Receivers

- [awscloudwatch](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/awscloudwatchreceiver/README.md)
- [awsecscontainermetrics](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/awsecscontainermetricsreceiver/README.md)
- [awss3](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/awss3receiver/README.md)
- [cloudflare](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/cloudflarereceiver/README.md)
- [datadog](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/datadogreceiver/README.md)
- [faro](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/faroreceiver/README.md)
- [filelog](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/filelogreceiver/README.md)
- [filestats](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/filestatsreceiver/README.md)
- [fluentforward](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/fluentforwardreceiver/README.md)
- [googlecloudpubsub](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/googlecloudpubsubreceiver/README.md)
- [hostmetrics](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/hostmetricsreceiver/README.md)
- [influxdb](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/influxdbreceiver/README.md)
- [jaeger](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/jaegerreceiver/README.md)
- [k8sobjectsreceiver](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/k8sobjectsreceiver/README.md)
- [kafka](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/kafkareceiver/README.md)
- [kubeletstatsreceiver](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/kubeletstatsreceiver/README.md)
- [prometheus](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/prometheusreceiver/README.md)
- [prometheusremotewrite](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/prometheusremotewritereceiver/README.md)
- [solace](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/solacereceiver/README.md)
- [splunkhec](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/splunkhecreceiver/README.md)
- [syslog](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/syslogreceiver/README.md)
- [tcplog](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/tcplogreceiver/README.md)
- [vcenter](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/vcenterreceiver/README.md)
- [zipkin](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/zipkinreceiver/README.md)
- [otlp](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/receiver/otlpreceiver/README.md)

Connectors

- [count](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/connector/countconnector/README.md)
- [grafanacloud](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/connector/grafanacloudconnector/README.md)
- [servicegraph](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/connector/servicegraphconnector/README.md)
- [spanmetrics](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/connector/spanmetricsconnector/README.md)
- [forward](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/connector/forwardconnector/README.md)

Processors

- [attributes](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/attributesprocessor/README.md)
- [cumulativetodelta](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/cumulativetodeltaprocessor/README.md)
- [deltatocumulative](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/deltatocumulativeprocessor/README.md)
- [filter](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/filterprocessor/README.md)
- [groupbyattrs](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/groupbyattrsprocessor/README.md)
- [interval](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/intervalprocessor/README.md)
- [k8sattributes](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/k8sattributesprocessor/README.md)
- [metricstarttime](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/metricstarttimeprocessor/README.md)
- [probabilisticsampler](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/probabilisticsamplerprocessor/README.md)
- [resource](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/resourceprocessor/README.md)
- [resourcedetection](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/resourcedetectionprocessor/README.md)
- [span](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/spanprocessor/README.md)
- [tailsampling](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/tailsamplingprocessor/README.md)
- [transform](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/processor/transformprocessor/README.md)
- [batch](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/processor/batchprocessor/README.md)
- [memorylimiter](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/processor/memorylimiterprocessor/README.md)

Exporters

- [awss3](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/awss3exporter/README.md)
- [faro](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/faroexporter/README.md)
- [file](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/fileexporter/README.md)
- [googlecloud](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/googlecloudexporter/README.md)
- [googlecloudpubsub](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/googlecloudpubsubexporter/README.md)
- [kafka](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/kafkaexporter/README.md)
- [loadbalancing](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/loadbalancingexporter/README.md)
- [prometheus](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/prometheusexporter/README.md)
- [prometheusremotewrite](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/prometheusremotewriteexporter/README.md)
- [splunkhec](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/splunkhecexporter/README.md)
- [syslog](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/syslogexporter/README.md)
- [zipkin](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/zipkinexporter/README.md)
- [debug](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/debugexporter/README.md)
- [nop](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/nopexporter/README.md)
- [otlp](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/otlpexporter/README.md)
- [otlphttp](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/tree/v0.147.0/exporter/otlphttpexporter/README.md)

To view the full list of components and their versions, refer to the [OpenTelemetry Collector Builder manifest](https://github.com/grafana/alloy/blob/main/collector/builder-config.yaml).

## Next steps

- Refer to [The OTel Engine](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/alloy/set-up/otel_engine) for information about how to run the OTel Engine.
- Refer to the [OTel CLI reference](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/otel) for more information about the OTel CLI.