Tool Comparison · 2026 Edition

OpenTracing vs OpenTelemetry: What Changed, What to Use Today

OpenTracing was the CNCF's first attempt at vendor-neutral distributed tracing APIs. OpenTelemetry replaced it (and OpenCensus) in 2019 and now covers traces, metrics, and logs. Here's what changed, why, and how to migrate.

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TL;DR

Key takeaways

OpenTracing is a tracing-only API specification archived by the CNCF in 2019; it is officially deprecated and no longer accepts new contributions.
OpenTelemetry (OTel) is the merger of OpenTracing + OpenCensus and now covers all three observability pillars — traces, metrics, and logs — as a single project.
OTel ships SDKs, an OTLP wire protocol, and a Collector; OpenTracing was API-only and left wire format and SDK to vendors.
If you still have OpenTracing instrumentation, the OTel shim lets you migrate incrementally — but new code should use the OpenTelemetry SDK directly.

History and status

OpenTracing was founded in 2016 to standardize distributed tracing APIs across vendors (Jaeger, Zipkin, Datadog, Instana).

OpenCensus launched in parallel inside Google (2018), covering traces and metrics and shipping SDKs instead of only specs.

In 2019 the two projects merged into OpenTelemetry, which became a CNCF incubating project in 2019 and graduated in 2024 for Traces and Metrics (Logs stable in SDKs since 2023).

OpenTracing is archived; its final 1.x API spec is frozen. Jaeger, the reference implementation, now uses OpenTelemetry.

What OpenTelemetry adds beyond OpenTracing

Three signals: traces, metrics, and logs — OpenTracing only covered traces.

SDKs: OTel ships official reference SDKs for ~12 languages; OpenTracing only shipped API packages and left implementations to vendors.

A wire protocol (OTLP): OTel defines gRPC + HTTP protobuf for sending telemetry to any backend. OpenTracing had no wire format.

The OTel Collector: a vendor-neutral agent/gateway that receives, processes, and exports telemetry — OpenTracing had nothing comparable.

Semantic conventions: a shared vocabulary (http.method, db.system, messaging.destination) so backends can analyze telemetry consistently.

Migrating from OpenTracing to OpenTelemetry

The OTel project ships an OpenTracing shim: wrap the OTel Tracer as an OpenTracing Tracer so existing code calls continue to work while new code uses OTel directly.

Install the shim (e.g., opentelemetry-opentracing-shim in Java/Python/Go), initialize the OTel SDK, and the shim bridges spans into OTLP export.

For long-term maintenance, replace OpenTracing API calls with OpenTelemetry Tracer API gradually — context propagation, Baggage, and span attributes map cleanly.

Legacy B3 and Jaeger headers are still supported via OTel propagators, so you don't have to change your service-mesh config in one shot.

Using OpenTelemetry with Atatus

Atatus accepts OTLP (gRPC + HTTP) natively for traces, metrics, and logs — no proprietary SDK required.

You can point an OTel Collector exporter at Atatus and keep your existing instrumentation; or use Atatus auto-instrumentation for faster setup.

Correlation between traces, metrics, and logs happens automatically via OTel's trace_id and span_id semantic conventions.

Compared to running Jaeger + Prometheus + Loki yourself, Atatus is one managed backend for all three OTel signals.

Side-by-side comparison

OpenTracing

Pros

Simple API spec
Multi-vendor backing (2016–2019)

Cons

Archived / deprecated
Tracing only
No SDKs or wire protocol
No logs or metrics
No Collector

Pricing: Free (archived)

Best for: Historical — do not start new projects on it

OpenTelemetry

Pros

Traces + metrics + logs
Official SDKs for 12+ languages
OTLP wire protocol
OTel Collector
CNCF graduated
Semantic conventions

Cons

Larger surface area to learn
Collector adds a hop

Pricing: Free (open source)

Best for: Any new instrumentation project

Atatus + OpenTelemetry

Pros

OTLP native ingest
Managed backend for 3 signals
Correlation across traces/logs/metrics
Auto-instrumentation available
Flat pricing

Cons

SaaS by default (on-prem available)

Pricing: Flat per-host, all signals included

Best for: Teams using OTel who don't want to run storage

Verdict

OpenTracing is deprecated; use OpenTelemetry for all new instrumentation. Use the OTel OpenTracing shim to migrate incrementally. For the backend, pair OTel with Atatus to get OTLP-native ingest, cross-signal correlation, and managed storage without running Jaeger, Prometheus, and Loki yourself.