---
title: "TraceQL: when you're ready for precision | Grafana Labs"
description: "What TraceQL is and when you'd graduate to it from queryless exploration. Named only, no syntax."
---

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

## TraceQL: when you’re ready for precision

Reading a trace someone found for you is one thing. Sometimes you need to go the other way and find every trace that matches a precise condition, for example “checkout requests slower than two seconds that returned an error.” Clicking through a visual explorer gets slow when your question is that specific.

For questions like that, Tempo has a query language built just for traces, called **TraceQL**. You describe the traces you want, and Tempo returns the ones that match, ready to open in the same trace view you already know how to read.

## When to graduate to it

- **Start queryless**: explore traces visually to answer most questions.
- **Reach for TraceQL**: when you know exactly what you’re hunting for and want to pin it down precisely.

You don’t need it to read a trace, and this journey doesn’t teach its syntax. Just know it’s there for when your questions get sharper.