Tracing

PostHog Tracing is a distributed tracing solution that works with the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP). You don't need any vendor-specific SDKs. Use standard OpenTelemetry libraries to send spans to PostHog using your project token.

Tracing is currently in alpha. Setup details may change before general availability.

• OpenTelemetry-compatible – Use standard OpenTelemetry SDKs, no PostHog packages required. Works with any compatible client.
• Part of the observability suite – Traces share the same pipeline as Logs, and correlate with session replays, errors, and analytics by trace_id.
• No vendor lock-in – Works with your existing OpenTelemetry setup.

Tracing acts as a generic OTLP receiver built by PostHog. Here's how it works:

1. Use standard OpenTelemetry tracing APIs in your application
2. Include your project token in the Authorization header or as a query parameter
3. Configure your OpenTelemetry client to send spans to PostHog's HTTP endpoint
4. Search and explore your traces in the PostHog interface