Grafana Alloy Has a Free API — The OpenTelemetry Collector You Actually Want

TL;DR Grafana Alloy is an open-source OpenTelemetry Collector distribution that replaces Grafana Agent. It collects metrics, logs, and traces with a programmable pipeline — and it's completely free. What Is Grafana Alloy? Grafana Alloy is Grafana's vendor-neutral telemetry collector: OpenTelemetry native — built on OTel Collector components Programmable pipelines — River configuration language (like HCL) Metrics + Logs + Traces — all three signals in one binary Grafana ecosystem — ships to Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, Mimir Free and open source — Apache 2.0 license Quick Start # Install on macOS brew install grafana/grafana/alloy # Install on Linux curl -fsSL https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg sudo apt-get install alloy # Or Docker docker run -v ./config.alloy:/etc/alloy/config.alloy \ -p 12345:12345 grafana/alloy:latest \ run /etc/alloy/config.alloy Configuration with River // config.alloy — Collect metrics from Prometheus endpoints prome