---
id: azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry
version: "1.0.0b13"
license: unclear
license_treatment: unclear
maintenance: active
---

# azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry — Microsoft Azure Core OpenTelemetry plugin Library for Python

License: unclear · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 16.3M/mo

## What it is and what it does

This package is a plugin that bridges Azure SDK clients with OpenTelemetry, the industry-standard observability framework. It automatically instruments HTTP requests and operations made by Azure service clients to emit distributed tracing spans without requiring additional code changes. Once configured—either via the AZURE_SDK_TRACING_IMPLEMENTATION environment variable or programmatically through azure.core.settings—the plugin hooks into Azure Core's pipeline to capture span data including HTTP methods, status codes, server addresses, and exception details, then exports them to your configured OpenTelemetry exporter.

The package handles span lifecycle management, context propagation, and suppression of redundant internal spans automatically. Recent versions align span attribute names with OpenTelemetry semantic conventions version 1.23.1, remapping attributes like http.method to http.request.method for standards compliance. It is designed to work seamlessly with any Azure SDK that depends on azure-core, requiring minimal setup beyond installing the package and configuring your OpenTelemetry tracer provider.

Use it for:

- Enable distributed tracing for Azure Storage, Key Vault, or Event Hubs calls to track request flow across services.
- Export Azure SDK operation spans to Azure Monitor for centralized observability and performance monitoring.
- Diagnose latency and failures in Azure service interactions by correlating spans with trace IDs across your system.
- Integrate Azure workloads into existing OpenTelemetry observability pipelines without code changes to Azure client calls.
- Record exception details and HTTP status codes in spans for post-incident analysis and alerting on Azure SDK errors.

## Worth the install?

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

Integrates Azure SDK clients with OpenTelemetry to emit distributed tracing spans for observability and monitoring of Azure service calls.

Yes, if you are using Azure SDKs and need distributed tracing. The package is actively maintained, has low install friction, and integrates cleanly with opentelemetry-api and azure-core. The main condition is that you must run Python 3.10 or later (3.8 and 3.9 are no longer supported as of version 1.0.0b13). License information is not clearly documented, so verify licensing terms before use in restricted environments.

## Install

pip install azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry
uv add azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry
poetry add azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry

## Installing azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry

Before you install: Low install friction with only two runtime dependencies (opentelemetry-api and azure-core). Package is actively maintained with a recent release; however, version 1.0.0b13 dropped support for Python 3.8 and 3.9, requiring Python 3.10 or later.

Quickstart:

pip install azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry

from azure.core.settings import settings
settings.tracing_implementation = "opentelemetry"

from opentelemetry import trace
tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)
with tracer.start_as_current_span(name="MyApplication"):
    pass  # Azure SDK calls within this span will be traced

Requires Python 3.10 or later; Python 3.8 and 3.9 are no longer supported as of version 1.0.0b13.

Verify before relying:

- Whether license information is available elsewhere (license_raw and license_spdx are both null).
- Compatibility matrix with specific Azure SDK versions and OpenTelemetry exporter implementations.

## Package facts

- License: not declared (unclear)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 16.3M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

azure opentelemetry tracing, distributed tracing azure sdk, azure span instrumentation, opentelemetry azure integration, azure core tracing plugin, azure observability monitoring, trace azure service calls, azure-sdk, observability, distributed-tracing

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/azure-core-tracing-opentelemetry/)