Ross ROSS = Recommend OSS · open-source software intelligence for agents

open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java-instrumentation

OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation and instrumentation libraries for Java observed · 2026-08-28

github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java-instrumentation · homepage · Java · Apache-2.0 (permissive) observed · 2026-08-28

Health v2 · maintenance only

99/100

  • Activity 99
  • Release rhythm 99
  • Longevity 100
How is this computed?

round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.

  • gap_med: 26.0
  • age_days: 2534
  • days_rel: 10
  • days_push: 7
  • n_releases_24m: 33

Full methodology

Adoption not part of the score

2612 stars · 1142 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation for Java, providing a Java agent JAR that attaches to any Java 8+ application and injects bytecode to capture traces, metrics, and logs from popular libraries and frameworks without code changes. It also publishes standalone instrumentation libraries for those who prefer manual integration over the agent.

Use cases

  • add distributed tracing to a Java app without code changes
  • instrument Spring Boot HTTP and database calls automatically
  • export traces and metrics to Jaeger or Prometheus
  • capture telemetry from Kafka and gRPC calls in Java services
  • zero-code observability for legacy Java 8 applications
  • correlate logs with traces via MDC auto-instrumentation
  • extend the agent with custom instrumentation

When to choose

  • you want out-of-the-box tracing, metrics, and logs for Java services with minimal effort
  • you cannot or do not want to modify application source code
  • you use popular Java frameworks and libraries covered by the supported list
  • you need vendor-neutral telemetry exportable to any observability backend

When to avoid

  • you need a non-JVM language's instrumentation
  • you require a full observability backend with storage and visualization, since this only generates telemetry
  • you need fine-grained control over every span and prefer fully manual instrumentation APIs
  • your runtime or framework is unsupported by the agent

Facets

library · maturity active

monitoring tracing logging middleware developer-tools monitoring microservices jvm cross-platform cloud opentelemetry java-agent auto-instrumentation telemetry apm distributed-tracing metrics observability bytecode-instrumentation otlp devops docker kubernetes

10 sources

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java-instrumentation")

Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem