Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

DocumentationTempo documentationAPI

Tempo HTTP API

Tempo exposes an API for pushing and querying traces, and operating the cluster itself.

For the sake of clarity, API endpoints are grouped by service. These endpoints are exposed both when running Tempo in microservices and monolithic mode:

• microservices: each service exposes its own endpoints
• monolithic: the Tempo process exposes all API endpoints for the services running internally

For externally support GRPC API see below

Endpoints

(*) This endpoint is not always available, check the specific section for more details.

Readiness probe

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GET /ready

Returns status code 200 when Tempo is ready to serve traffic.

Metrics

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GET /metrics

Returns the metrics for the running Tempo service in the Prometheus exposition format.

Pprof

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GET /debug/pprof/heap
GET /debug/pprof/block
GET /debug/pprof/profile
GET /debug/pprof/trace
GET /debug/pprof/goroutine
GET /debug/pprof/mutex

Returns the runtime profiling data in the format expected by the pprof visualization tool. There are many things which can be profiled using this including heap, trace, goroutine, etc.

For more information, please check out the official documentation of pprof.

Ingest

The Tempo distributor uses the OpenTelemetry Collector receivers as a foundation to ingest trace data. These APIs are meant to be consumed by the corresponding client SDK or pipeline component, such as Grafana Agent, OpenTelemetry Collector, or Jaeger Agent.

For information on how to use the Zipkin endpoint with curl (for debugging purposes), refer to Pushing spans with HTTP.

Query

The following request is used to retrieve a trace from the query frontend service in a microservices deployment or the Tempo endpoint in a monolithic mode deployment.

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GET /api/traces/<traceid>?start=<start>&end=<end>

Parameters:

• start = (unix epoch seconds) Optional. Along with end define a time range from which traces should be returned.
• end = (unix epoch seconds) Optional. Along with start define a time range from which traces should be returned. Providing both start and end will include traces for the specified time range only. If the parameters are not provided then Tempo will check for the trace across all blocks in backend. If the parameters are provided, it will only check in the blocks within the specified time range, this can result in trace not being found or partial results if it does not fall in the specified time range.

The following query API is also provided on the querier service for debugging purposes.

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GET /querier/api/traces/<traceid>?mode=xxxx&blockStart=0000&blockEnd=FFFF&start=<start>&end=<end>

Parameters:

• mode = (blocks|ingesters|all) Specifies whether the querier should look for the trace in blocks, ingesters or both (all). Default = all
• blockStart = (GUID) Specifies the blockID start boundary. If specified, the querier will only search blocks with IDs > blockStart. Default = 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 Example: blockStart=12345678-0000-0000-1235-000001240000
• blockEnd = (GUID) Specifies the blockID finish boundary. If specified, the querier will only search blocks with IDs < blockEnd. Default = FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF Example: blockStart=FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-456787652341
• start = (unix epoch seconds) Optional. Along with end define a time range from which traces should be returned.
• end = (unix epoch seconds) Optional. Along with start define a time range from which traces should be returned. Providing both start and end will include blocks for the specified time range only.

This API is not meant to be used directly unless for debugging the sharding functionality of the query frontend.

Returns: By default this endpoint returns OpenTelemetry JSON, but if it can also send OpenTelemetry proto if Accept: application/protobuf is passed.

Search

Tempo’s Search API finds traces based on span and process attributes (tags and values). Note that search functionality is not available on v2 blocks.

When performing a search, Tempo does a massively parallel search over the given time range, and takes the first N results. Even identical searches will differ due to things like machine load and network latency. TraceQL follows the same behavior.

The API is available in the query frontend service in a microservices deployment, or the Tempo endpoint in a monolithic mode deployment.

The following request is used to find traces containing spans from service myservice and the url contains api/myapi.

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GET /api/search?tags=service.name%3Dmyservice%20http.url%3Dapi%2Fmyapi

The URL query parameters support the following values:

Parameters for TraceQL Search

• q = (TraceQL query): Url encoded TraceQL query.

Parameters for Tag Based Search

• tags = (logfmt): logfmt encoding of any span-level or process-level attributes to filter on. The value is matched as a case-insensitive substring. Key-value pairs are separated by spaces. If a value contains a space, it should be enclosed within double quotes.
• minDuration = (go duration value) Optional. Find traces with at least this duration. Duration values are of the form 10s for 10 seconds, 100ms, 30m, etc.
• maxDuration = (go duration value) Optional. Find traces with no greater than this duration. Uses the same form as minDuration.

Parameters supported for all searches

• limit = (integer) Optional. Limit the number of search results. Default is 20, but this is configurable in the querier. Refer to Configuration.
• start = (unix epoch seconds) Optional. Along with end define a time range from which traces should be returned.
• end = (unix epoch seconds) Optional. Along with start, define a time range from which traces should be returned. Providing both start and end will change the way that Tempo searches. If the parameters are not provided, then Tempo will search the recent trace data stored in the ingesters. If the parameters are provided, it will search the backend as well.
• spss = (integer) Optional. Limit the number of spans per span-set. Default value is 3.

Example of TraceQL search

Example of how to query Tempo using curl. This query will return all traces that have their status set to error.

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$ curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/search --data-urlencode 'q={ status=error }' | jq
{
  "traces": [
    {
      "traceID": "2f3e0cee77ae5dc9c17ade3689eb2e54",
      "rootServiceName": "shop-backend",
      "rootTraceName": "update-billing",
      "startTimeUnixNano": "1684778327699392724",
      "durationMs": 557,
      "spanSets": [
        {
          "spans": [
            {
              "spanID": "563d623c76514f8e",
              "startTimeUnixNano": "1684778327735077898",
              "durationNanos": "446979497",
              "attributes": [
                {
                  "key": "status",
                  "value": {
                    "stringValue": "error"
                  }
                }
              ]
            }
          ],
          "matched": 1
        }
      ]
  ],
  "metrics": {
    "totalBlocks": 13
  }
}

Example of Tags Based Search

Example of how to query Tempo using curl. This query will return all traces that have a tag service.name containing cartservice and a minimum duration of 600 ms.

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$ curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/search --data-urlencode 'tags=service.name=cartservice' --data-urlencode minDuration=600ms | jq
{
  "traces": [
    {
      "traceID": "d6e9329d67b6146a",
      "rootServiceName": "frontend",
      "rootTraceName": "/cart",
      "startTimeUnixNano": "1634727903545000000",
      "durationMs": 611
    },
    {
      "traceID": "1b1ba462b409200d",
      "rootServiceName": "frontend",
      "rootTraceName": "/cart",
      "startTimeUnixNano": "1634727775935000000",
      "durationMs": 611
    }
  ],
  "metrics": {
    "inspectedTraces": 3100,
    "inspectedBytes": "3811736",
    "totalBlocks": 3
  }
}

Search tags

Ingester configuration complete_block_timeout affects how long tags are available for search.

This endpoint retrieves all discovered tag names that can be used in search. The endpoint is available in the query frontend service in a microservices deployment, or the Tempo endpoint in a monolithic mode deployment. The tags endpoint takes a scope that controls the kinds of tags or attributes returned. If nothing is provided, the endpoint will return all resource and span tags.

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GET /api/search/tags?scope=<resource|span|intrinsic>

Example

Example of how to query Tempo using curl. This query will return all discovered tag names.

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$ curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/search/tags?scope=span  | jq
{
  "tagNames": [
    "host.name",
    "http.method",
    "http.status_code",
    "http.url",
    "ip",
    "load_generator.seq_num",
    "name",
    "region",
    "root_cause_error",
    "sampler.param",
    "sampler.type",
    "service.name",
    "starter",
    "version"
  ]
}

Search tags V2

Ingester configuration complete_block_timeout affects how long tags are available for search.

This endpoint retrieves all discovered tag names that can be used in search. The endpoint is available in the query frontend service in a microservices deployment, or the Tempo endpoint in a monolithic mode deployment. The tags endpoint takes a scope that controls the kinds of tags or attributes returned. If nothing is provided, the endpoint will return all resource and span tags.

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GET /api/v2/search/tags?scope=<resource|span|intrinsic>

Example

Example of how to query Tempo using curl. This query will return all discovered tag names.

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$ curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/v2/search/tags  | jq
{
  "scopes": [
    {
      "name": "span",
      "tags": [
        "article.count",
        "http.flavor",
        "http.method",
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "resource",
      "tags": [
        "k6",
        "service.name"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "intrinsic",
      "tags": [
        "duration",
        "kind",
        "name",
        "status"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Search tag values

Ingester configuration complete_block_timeout affects how long tags are available for search.

This endpoint retrieves all discovered values for the given tag, which can be used in search. The endpoint is available in the query frontend service in a microservices deployment, or the Tempo endpoint in a monolithic mode deployment. The following request will return all discovered service names.

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GET /api/search/tag/service.name/values

Example

Example of how to query Tempo using curl. This query will return all discovered values for the tag service.name.

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$ curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/search/tag/service.name/values  | jq
{
  "tagValues": [
    "adservice",
    "cartservice",
    "checkoutservice",
    "frontend",
    "productcatalogservice",
    "recommendationservice"
  ]
}

Search tag values V2

This endpoint retrieves all discovered values and their data types for the given TraceQL identifier. The endpoint is available in the query frontend service in a microservices deployment, or the Tempo endpoint in a monolithic mode deployment. This endpoint is similar to /api/search/tag/<tag>/values but operates on TraceQL identifiers and types. See TraceQL documentation for more information.

Example

This example queries Tempo using curl and returns all discovered values for the tag service.name.

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$ curl http://localhost:3200/api/v2/search/tag/.service.name/values | jq .
{
  "tagValues": [
    {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "customer"
    },
    {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "mysql"
    },
    {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "driver"
    },
    {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "frontend"
    },
    {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "redis"
    }
  ]
}

Filtered tag values

If you set Tempo’s autocomplete_filtering_enabled configuration parameter to true (default value is false), you can provide an optional URL query parameter, q to your request. The q parameter is a URL-encoded TraceQL query. If provided, the tag values returned by the API are filtered to only return values seen on spans matching your filter parameters.

Queries can be incomplete: for example, { .cluster = }. Tempo extracts only the valid matchers and build a valid query.

Only queries with a single selector {} and AND && operators are supported.

• Example supported: { .cluster = "us-east-1" && .service = "frontend" }
• Example unsupported: { .cluster = "us-east-1" || .service = "frontend" } && { .cluster = "us-east-2" }

The following request returns all discovered service names on spans with span.http.method=GET:

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GET /api/v2/search/tag/.service.name/values?q="{span.http.method='GET'}"

If a particular service name (for example, shopping-cart) is only present on spans with span.http.method=POST, it would not be included in the list of values returned.

Query Echo Endpoint

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GET /api/echo

Returns status code 200 and body echo when the query frontend is up and ready to receive requests.

Flush

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GET,POST /flush

Triggers a flush of all in-memory traces to the WAL. Useful at the time of rollout restarts and unexpected crashes.

Specify the tenant parameter to flush data of a single tenant only.

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GET,POST /flush?tenant=dev

Shutdown

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GET,POST /shutdown

Flushes all in-memory traces and the WAL to the long term backend. Gracefully exits from the ring. Shuts down the ingester service.

Distributor ring status

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GET /distributor/ring

Displays a web page with the distributor hash ring status, including the state, healthy and last heartbeat time of each distributor.

For more information, check the page on consistent hash ring.

Ingesters ring status

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GET /ingester/ring

Displays a web page with the ingesters hash ring status, including the state, healthy and last heartbeat time of each ingester.

For more information, check the page on consistent hash ring

Metrics-generator ring status

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GET /metrics-generator/ring

Displays a web page with the metrics-generator hash ring status, including the state, health, and last heartbeat time of each metrics-generator.

This endpoint is only available when the metrics-generator is enabled. See metrics-generator.

For more information, check the page on consistent hash ring

Compactor ring status

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GET /compactor/ring

Displays a web page with the compactor hash ring status, including the state, healthy and last heartbeat time of each compactor.

For more information, check the page on consistent hash ring

Status

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GET /status

Print all available information by default.

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GET /status/version

Print the version information.

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GET /status/services

Displays a list of services and their status. If a service failed it will show the failure case.

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GET /status/endpoints

Displays status information about the API endpoints.

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GET /status/config

Displays the configuration.

Displays the configuration currently applied to Tempo (in YAML format), including default values and settings via CLI flags. Sensitive data is masked. Please be aware that the exported configuration doesn’t include the per-tenant overrides.

Optional query parameter:

• mode = (diff|defaults): diff shows the difference between the default values and the current configuration. defaults shows the default values.

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GET /status/runtime_config

Displays the override configuration.

Query parameter:

• mode = (diff): Show the difference between defaults and overrides.

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GET /status/usage-stats

Displays anonymous usage stats data that is reported back to Grafana Labs.

Tempo GRPC API

Tempo uses GRPC to internally communicate with itself, but only has one externally supported client. The query-frontend component implements the streaming querier interface defined below. See here for the complete proto definition and generated code.

By default this service is only offered over the GRPC port. However, one can offer this streaming service over the HTTP port as well (which Grafana expects). To enable the streaming service over the http port for use with Grafana set the following.

Note: Enabling this setting is incompatible with TLS.

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stream_over_http_enabled: true

The below rpc call returns only traces that are new or have updated each time SearchResponse is returned except for the last response. The final response sent is guaranteed to have the entire resultset.

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service StreamingQuerier {
  rpc Search(SearchRequest) returns (stream SearchResponse);
}

message SearchRequest {
  map<string, string> Tags = 1
  uint32 MinDurationMs = 2;
  uint32 MaxDurationMs = 3;
  uint32 Limit = 4;
  uint32 start = 5;
  uint32 end = 6;
  string Query = 8;
}

message SearchResponse {
  repeated TraceSearchMetadata traces = 1;
  SearchMetrics metrics = 2;
}

message TraceSearchMetadata {
  string traceID = 1;
  string rootServiceName = 2;
  string rootTraceName = 3;
  uint64 startTimeUnixNano = 4;
  uint32 durationMs = 5;
  SpanSet spanSet = 6; // deprecated. use SpanSets field below
  repeated SpanSet spanSets = 7;
}

message SpanSet {
  repeated Span spans = 1;
  uint32 matched = 2;
}

message Span {
  string spanID = 1;
  string name = 2;
  uint64 startTimeUnixNano = 3;
  uint64 durationNanos = 4;
  repeated tempopb.common.v1.KeyValue attributes = 5;
}

message SearchMetrics {
  uint32 inspectedTraces = 1;
  uint64 inspectedBytes = 2;
  uint32 totalBlocks = 3;
  uint32 completedJobs = 4;
  uint32 totalJobs = 5;
  uint64 totalBlockBytes = 6;
}