opentelemetry-sdk
OpenTelemetry Python SDK
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. The SDK is production-stable for traces and metrics, actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, and is widely adopted (top 100 PyPI packages). Install it when you need to actually export telemetry from your application. Be aware that the Logs signal is still in development and may require code changes as it stabilizes.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.10 or later.
- Exporters and propagators must be installed separately.
- Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution.
License · maintenance · safety
Apache-2.0 (permissive) — Licensed under Apache-2.0 (permissive), allowing use in commercial and proprietary projects with minimal restrictions.
last release 2026-07-16 (29 days) · last repo commit 2026-08-13 · 2,587 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 521,829,274 downloads/mo, #78 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install opentelemetry-sdk
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import SimpleSpanProcessor
provider = TracerProvider()
provider.add_span_processor(SimpleSpanProcessor(exporter))
tracer = provider.get_tracer(__name__)- Whether the Logs signal's in-development status and planned breaking changes will affect existing instrumentation code.
- Performance characteristics and overhead of the SDK in high-throughput production scenarios.
What it is and what it does
OpenTelemetry SDK is the reference implementation of the OpenTelemetry API specification for Python, providing concrete classes and exporters to collect, process, and send telemetry data (traces, metrics, and logs) from applications. It sits between your instrumented code and backend observability systems, handling the actual work of span creation, metric aggregation, and log processing that the API defines abstractly.
The SDK depends on opentelemetry-api for the abstract interfaces, opentelemetry-semantic-conventions for standard naming, and typing-extensions for type hints. Traces and metrics are stable; logs are still in development and may introduce breaking changes. Applications typically use this package directly, while libraries should depend only on the API and let the application choose the SDK or an alternative implementation.
Use it for
- Instrument a Python web application to send distributed traces to a backend like Jaeger or Zipkin.
- Collect application metrics (counters, histograms, gauges) and export them to Prometheus or similar.
- Set up structured logging with correlation to traces for end-to-end observability.
- Build a custom exporter to send telemetry to a proprietary or internal observability platform.
- Integrate with existing OpenTelemetry instrumentation packages for automatic tracing of libraries.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
The SDK is production-stable for traces and metrics, actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, and is widely adopted (top 100 PyPI packages). Install it when you need to actually export telemetry from your application. Be aware that the Logs signal is still in development and may require code changes as it stabilizes.
Install
opentelemetry-sdk on PyPI
Before you install
Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution. Actively maintained with a release 29 days ago and 2587 repository stars. Supports current Python versions (3.10–3.14) and follows a structured release cadence.
Requires Python 3.10 or later. Exporters and propagators must be installed separately.
License in practice
Licensed under Apache-2.0 (permissive), allowing use in commercial and proprietary projects with minimal restrictions.
Quickstart
pip install opentelemetry-sdk
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import SimpleSpanProcessor
provider = TracerProvider()
provider.add_span_processor(SimpleSpanProcessor(exporter))
tracer = provider.get_tracer(__name__)Verify before relying
- Whether the Logs signal's in-development status and planned breaking changes will affect existing instrumentation code.
- Performance characteristics and overhead of the SDK in high-throughput production scenarios.
Package facts
| License | Apache-2.0 permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.10 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 3 packagesopentelemetry-apiopentelemetry-semantic-conventionstyping-extensions |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 29 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 521,829,274 / month, #78 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableFramework :: OpenTelemetryIntended Audience :: DevelopersProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14Typing :: Typed |
Evidence: opentelemetry_sdk-1.44.0-py3-none-any.whl
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See also opentelemetry-test-utils · opentelemetry-distro · uptrace · opentelemetry-instrumentation-logging · opentelemetry-exporter-prometheus · splunk-opentelemetry · opentelemetry-exporter-prometheus-remote-write · opentelemetry-instrumentation-kafka-python · opentelemetry-contrib-instrumentations