# census-instrumentation/opencensus-go

A stats collection and distributed tracing framework

Repository: https://github.com/census-instrumentation/opencensus-go
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/opencensus-go
Homepage: http://opencensus.io
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: go, stats, trace, monitoring, cloud, golang, opencensus, distributed-tracing, prometheus, jaegertracing, zipkin
Archived: true
Last push: 2023-07-26T10:29:44+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3493, "days_push": 1134, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2040, forks 325 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:08.404824+00:00)

## What it is
OpenCensus Go is a Go toolkit for collecting application performance data, providing tags, stats/metrics collection, and distributed tracing with exporters to Prometheus, Jaeger, Zipkin, Stackdriver, and others. It has been archived and merged into OpenTelemetry, which is its official successor.

## Use cases
- add distributed tracing to a Go application
- collect application metrics in Go
- export Go service metrics to Prometheus
- trace gRPC and HTTP requests in Go
- instrument a Go microservice for observability
- send traces to Jaeger or Zipkin from Go

## When to choose
- maintaining a legacy Go codebase already built on OpenCensus
- you need the OpenCensus API specifically for compatibility with existing integrations

## When to avoid
- starting a new Go project needing tracing or metrics - use OpenTelemetry instead
- you want an actively maintained observability library
- you need new features or long-term support

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: abandoned
- function: tracing, monitoring, middleware
- domain: monitoring, developer-tools, microservices
- platform: go, cross-platform
- tags: opencensus, distributed-tracing, metrics, prometheus, jaeger, zipkin, opentelemetry-predecessor, archived

## Member repositories
- census-instrumentation/opencensus-go (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:08.404824+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:58:21.645370+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/census-instrumentation/opencensus-go (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:08.404824+00:00, sha 42f811bc7dc0)
  - homepage: http://opencensus.io (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.662470+00:00, sha aa2875056622)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/erlang/tracing (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.680576+00:00, sha b0f9001b212a)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.671582+00:00, sha 6b2c2c4c0881)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/dotnet (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.673305+00:00, sha 7a8f805d9850)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/dotnet/tracing (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.674866+00:00, sha 50a21dc9b235)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/erlang (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.676612+00:00, sha 6b111e136196)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/erlang/metrics (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.678184+00:00, sha ba95fa875bbb)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/cpp (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.682746+00:00, sha c7dcfe14e306)
  - site_page: https://opencensus.io/quickstart/cpp/metrics (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:35.685031+00:00, sha 4b1f341d308e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.