---
title: "Verify traces in Grafana Cloud | Grafana Labs"
description: "Learn how to verify that traces are being received and displayed in Grafana Cloud using the TraceQL Query Editor."
---

# Verify traces in Grafana Cloud

In this milestone, you verify that traces are being received in Grafana Cloud from your Grafana Alloy configuration. You’ll use the TraceQL Query Editor with a basic query to confirm your trace data flows correctly. Watch video ->

## Send sample traces

You can use your instrumented application to send traces or can use the `telemetrygen` tool to send traces.

### Use your instrumented application to send traces

Once Alloy is running, you can use your instrumented application to send traces. Start your application or service and then check Grafana Cloud to verify that traces are being received.

### Use `telemetrygen` to send traces

You can use [OpenTelemetry `telemetrygen`](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/main/cmd/telemetrygen) to generate tracing data.

1. Install `telemetrygen` using the [installation procedure](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/main/cmd/telemetrygen). **NOTE**: You don’t need to configure an OpenTelemetry Collector because we’re using Grafana Alloy.
2. Generate traces using `telemetrygen`:
   
   Bash ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```bash
   telemetrygen traces --otlp-insecure --rate 5 --duration 5s --otlp-endpoint 0.0.0.0:4317
   ```
   
   This configuration sends traces to Alloy for 5 seconds, at a rate of 5 traces per second.

If you receive a `partialSuccess` message, this indicates that the data has been received.

## View traces in Grafana Cloud

To verify traces are being received using the TraceQL Query Editor, complete the following steps:

1. Sign in to your Grafana Cloud environment, for example `mystack.grafana.net`.
2. On the Grafana Cloud home page, open the navigation menu on the left side of the screen and click **Explore**.
3. From the data source drop-down at the top of the page, select your traces data source.
   
   For example, select **grafanacloud-traces**.
4. In the TraceQL query editor, select the **Search** tab and click **Run query**.
   
   The `{ }` query searches for all traces without any filters, making it the simplest way to verify Grafana Cloud received the trace data.
5. Verify traces appear in the results. If your configuration works correctly, the query returns a list of all received traces.

In your final milestone, you reach the destination and explore next steps for expanding your observability capabilities.