Tempo — Distributed Tracing
Store huge volumes of traces cheaply and find them by ID or by trace query.
Tempo is Grafana's distributed tracing backend, built on the same cost philosophy as Loki: store everything in object storage with minimal indexing. Tempo accepts traces in all the common formats (OpenTelemetry/OTLP, Jaeger, Zipkin) and historically focused on retrieval by trace ID — you find the trace ID from a log or a metric exemplar, then Tempo fetches the full trace. TraceQL adds the ability to search for traces by attributes (duration, status, span tags) without a separate index store.
A vast warehouse that keeps every shipment record boxed and cheap. You usually arrive already knowing the tracking number (trace_id) from a receipt (a log or metric), and the warehouse pulls that exact box instantly.