Grafana Tempo Has a Free API — Distributed Tracing Without Sampling

Grafana Tempo is an open-source distributed tracing backend that stores 100% of traces at massive scale. Unlike Jaeger or Zipkin, Tempo requires only object storage (S3/GCS) — no complex databases. Free, open source, by Grafana Labs. Pairs perfectly with Loki and Prometheus. Why Use Tempo? 100% trace capture — no sampling, store every trace Cheap storage — uses S3/GCS/Azure Blob, not databases TraceQL — SQL-like query language for traces Multi-protocol — accepts Jaeger, Zipkin, OTLP, and OpenCensus Grafana integration — seamless dashboards and trace-to-log correlation Quick Setup 1. Install # Docker docker run -d --name tempo -p 3200:3200 -p 4317:4317 grafana/tempo:latest -config .file = /etc/tempo.yaml # Helm helm install tempo grafana/tempo --set tempo.storage.trace.backend = s3 2. Send Traces (OTLP) # Using curl with OTLP HTTP curl -X POST http://localhost:4318/v1/traces \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "resourceSpans": [{ "resource": {"attributes": [{"key": "service.na