Nats Exporter

Maintainers: @suckatrash, @kalebpace, @ChrsMark Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Exports traces, metrics, and logs to a NATS server. Payloads are published to NATS subjects using core NATS (fire-and-forget) or, optionally, JetStream for durable, acknowledged delivery.

[!NOTE] This component is in development. The configuration surface described below is stable, but the publishing implementation is being contributed incrementally.

Configuration

Field	Default	Description
`endpoint`	`nats://127.0.0.1:4222`	NATS server URL.
`pedantic`	`false`	Enable NATS pedantic mode, which makes the server strictly validate published subjects. Defaults to `false` to mirror the NATS client default. Enabling it is useful here so that a malformed subject produced by an OTTL expression surfaces as an error rather than being silently misrouted.
`tls`	(disabled)	TLS client configuration. See configtls.
`jetstream`	(unset)	When set, publish via JetStream instead of core NATS. See JetStream below.
`logs`		Per-signal configuration for logs. See Signal configuration.
`metrics`		Per-signal configuration for metrics.
`traces`		Per-signal configuration for traces.

Signal configuration

Each of logs, metrics, and traces accepts:

Field	Default	Description
`subject`	`"otel_logs"` / `"otel_metrics"` / `"otel_traces"`	OTTL value expression evaluated to produce the NATS subject. String literals must be quoted.
`marshaler`	`otlp_proto`	Built-in payload marshaler: `otlp_proto` or `otlp_json`. Mutually exclusive with `encoding_extension`.
`encoding_extension`	(unset)	Component ID of an encoding extension to marshal payloads. Mutually exclusive with `marshaler`.

JetStream

When the jetstream block is present, every payload is published with JetStream and the publish blocks until the server acknowledges persistence. By default the exporter ensures a stream exists for the configured subjects, creating one with lightweight defaults if it is absent: a single stream, limits retention bounded by both max_age and max_bytes, file storage, and a single replica. These defaults are sized for a small or edge deployment and are safe to run on a single-node server; scale them up (notably to three replicas) for a clustered hub. Set stream.manage: false to require a pre-existing stream instead — appropriate when the exporter holds publish-only credentials or streams are provisioned externally. Sharding a high-volume signal across multiple streams is a planned scale-up option and is not yet configurable.

Field	Default	Description
`domain`	(server default)	JetStream domain, e.g. when publishing through a leaf node to a hub.
`publish_timeout`	`0` (no exporter deadline)	Maximum time to wait for each publish acknowledgement.

Authentication

Authentication is configured under an auth: block. At most one authentication method may be configured. See the NATS authentication docs.

Block	Fields	Description
`token`	`token`	Token authentication.
`user`	`username`, `password`	Username/password authentication.
`nkey`	`public_key`, `seed`	NKey authentication.
`nkey_jwt`	`jwt`, `seed`	NKey authentication via JWT.
`nkey_user_file`	`user_file`	NKey authentication via a credentials file.

Example

exporters:
  # Minimal: core NATS, default subjects, OTLP protobuf.
  nats:
    endpoint: nats://localhost:4222

  # Full: JetStream durable publishing with auth, TLS, and per-signal subjects.
  nats/full:
    endpoint: nats://nats.example.com:4222
    tls:
      insecure: false
      ca_file: /etc/otel/certs/ca.crt
    auth:
      user:
        username: otel
        password: ${env:NATS_PASSWORD}
    jetstream:
      domain: hub
      publish_timeout: 5s
    logs:
      subject: '"otel.logs." + resource.attributes["service.name"]'
      marshaler: otlp_proto
    metrics:
      subject: '"otel.metrics"'
      marshaler: otlp_json
    traces:
      subject: '"otel.spans"'

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [nats]

Configuration

Example Configuration

nats:
  endpoint: nats://localhost:4222

nats/full:
  endpoint: nats://nats.example.com:4222
  pedantic: true
  tls:
    insecure: false
    ca_file: /etc/otel/certs/ca.crt
  auth:
    user:
      username: otel
      password: s3cret
  jetstream:
    domain: hub
    publish_timeout: 5s
  logs:
    subject: '"otel.logs"'
    marshaler: otlp_proto
  metrics:
    subject: '"otel.metrics"'
    marshaler: otlp_json
  traces:
    subject: '"otel.spans"'
    encoding_extension: otlp_encoding/nats

Last generated: 2026-10-05

​Nats Exporter

​Supported Telemetry

​Overview

​Configuration

​Signal configuration

​JetStream

​Authentication

​Example

​Configuration

​Example Configuration

Nats Exporter

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Configuration

Signal configuration

JetStream

Authentication

Example

Configuration

Example Configuration