Getting Started

Send your first trace
in 5 minutes

Get distributed traces, metrics, and logs flowing into obseria.io using the OpenTelemetry SDK. No agents to manage, no lock-in, no surprise bills.

5 min

to first trace

0 agents

required

6 SDKs

supported

Prerequisites

A obseria.io account — free tier available, no credit card required

Node.js 18+, Python 3.8+, Go 1.21+, Java 11+, or .NET 8+

5 minutes of your time

Create free account

Select your language

Create an API key

Log in to your obseria.io account and navigate to Settings → API Keys → New key. Give it a name (e.g. production-ingest) and copy the key.

Warning:API keys are shown only once. Store yours in a secrets manager or environment variable — never commit it to source code.

dl_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Install the SDK

Install the OpenTelemetry SDK and OTLP exporter for Node.js:

bash

npm install @opentelemetry/sdk-node \
  @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node \
  @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc

Tip:obseria.io accepts any OpenTelemetry-compatible exporter. Already have OTel set up? Skip to Step 3.

Configure the exporter

Point the SDK at obseria.io's ingest endpoint and authenticate with your API key:

Protocol	Endpoint
gRPC (recommended)	`ingest.obseria.io:4317`
HTTP / protobuf	`https://ingest.obseria.io/v1/traces`
HTTP / JSON	`https://ingest.obseria.io/v1/traces`

typescript

// tracing.ts
import { NodeSDK } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-node';
import { OTLPTraceExporter } from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc';
import { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } from '@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node';

const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: 'grpc://ingest.obseria.io:4317',
    // Auth via OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS env var (see Step 3)
  }),
  instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()],
  serviceName: 'my-service',
});

sdk.start();

Run your service

Start your application with your obseria.io API key in the environment:

bash

DATALEAK_API_KEY=dl_live_xxxx \
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="authorization=Bearer dl_live_xxxx" \
node -r ./tracing.js index.js

Note:Traces appear in the obseria.io UI within a few seconds. Navigate to Tracing → Explorer to see them.

Verify in the UI

Make a few requests to your service. In the obseria.io UI, open Tracing → Explorer and look for traces from your service.

Each trace shows the full call tree — spans, attributes, status codes, and timing. Click any span to inspect its attributes and linked logs.

You're live!

If you can see traces in the UI, the setup is complete. Continue with Core Concepts to understand the data model, or set up Smart Alerting to get notified when things go wrong.

Next steps

Now that you have data flowing in, explore what obseria.io can do for you.

Core Concepts

Understand the obseria.io data model — organizations, projects, signals.

OpenTelemetry SDK

Full SDK configuration guide for all supported languages.

Integrations

Kubernetes, Docker, AWS Lambda, Fluent Bit, Syslog, and 400+ connectors.

Smart Alerting

AI-powered anomaly detection and routing to Slack, PagerDuty, or webhooks.

Introduction Core Concepts

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Send your first trace in 5 minutes