---
id: aws-opentelemetry-distro
version: "0.19.0"
license: Apache-2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# aws-opentelemetry-distro — AWS OpenTelemetry Python Distro

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 3.5M/mo

## What it is and what it does

This package is AWS's curated distribution of OpenTelemetry for Python, bundling the core OpenTelemetry libraries with AWS-specific exporters (OTLP over gRPC and HTTP) and instrumentation for dozens of popular frameworks and libraries. It simplifies setup by pre-selecting compatible versions and AWS best practices, rather than requiring manual assembly of individual OpenTelemetry components.

The package enables auto-instrumentation of Python applications—meaning traces, metrics, and logs are automatically collected from supported frameworks like Django, FastAPI, Flask, and AWS services like Lambda, SQS, and botocore—without requiring manual span creation in application code. It's designed for developers who want observability integrated into their Python applications with minimal boilerplate, particularly those already using AWS infrastructure.

Use it for:

- Auto-instrument a FastAPI or Flask application to send traces to AWS X-Ray or an OpenTelemetry collector without manual span code.
- Monitor AWS Lambda function execution with automatic instrumentation of boto3 and botocore calls.
- Collect traces from a Celery task queue or Kafka consumer application for distributed tracing across microservices.
- Enable observability for a Django application with automatic database and HTTP instrumentation.
- Export application telemetry to an OTLP-compatible backend (e.g., Datadog, Honeycomb, or self-hosted collector).

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides AWS-integrated OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation for Python applications, bundling OpenTelemetry core libraries and AWS-specific exporters and instrumentation plugins.

Yes, if you are building Python applications on AWS or using OpenTelemetry and want a pre-assembled, AWS-endorsed distribution. The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and bundles the instrumentation you'd otherwise assemble manually. Not necessary if you prefer to hand-pick individual OpenTelemetry components or are not using AWS services.

## Install

pip install aws-opentelemetry-distro
uv add aws-opentelemetry-distro
poetry add aws-opentelemetry-distro

## Installing aws-opentelemetry-distro

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution. Actively maintained with a recent release (22 days old) and current commit activity. Requires Python 3.10 or later.

License in practice: Apache-2.0 permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; suitable for most production environments.

Quickstart:

pip install aws-opentelemetry-distro

from opentelemetry.distro import configure_distro
configure_distro()

Requires Python 3.10 or later; intended for auto-instrumentation of Python applications, not standalone use.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the 63 runtime dependencies are all optional or if some are required for basic functionality.
- Whether auto-instrumentation works without additional environment configuration or setup beyond import.
- Performance overhead of instrumentation on typical application workloads.

## Package facts

- License: Apache-2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 3.5M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

opentelemetry aws instrumentation, auto-instrumentation python aws, distributed tracing aws python, opentelemetry distro aws, observability instrumentation aws, python application tracing aws, observability, aws-native, instrumentation

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