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Zipkin Exporter

Status Available in: core, contrib Maintainers: @MovieStoreGuy, @andrzej-stencel, @crobert-1 Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

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Supported Telemetry

Traces

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Overview

Exports data to a Zipkin back-end. By default, this exporter requires TLS and offers queued retry capabilities.

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Getting Started

The following settings are required:
  • endpoint (no default): URL to which the exporter is going to send Zipkin trace data. For example: http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans.
The following settings are optional:
  • format (default = json): The format to sent events in. Can be set to json or proto.
  • default_service_name (default = <missing service name>): What to name services missing this information.
To use TLS, specify https:// as the protocol scheme in the URL passed to the endpoint property. See Advanced Configuration for more TLS options. Example: 
exporters:
  zipkin/nontls:
    endpoint: "http://some.url:9411/api/v2/spans"
    format: proto
    default_service_name: unknown-service

  zipkin/withtls:
    endpoint: "https://some.url:9411/api/v2/spans"

  zipkin/tlsnoverify:
    endpoint: "https://some.url:9411/api/v2/spans"
    tls:
      insecure_skip_verify: true

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Advanced Configuration

Several helper files are leveraged to provide additional capabilities automatically:

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Configuration

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Example Configuration

zipkin:
  endpoint: "http://some.location.org:9411/api/v2/spans"
zipkin/2:
  endpoint: "https://somedest:1234/api/v2/spans"
  format: proto
  default_service_name: test_name
  idle_conn_timeout: 5s
  max_idle_conns: 50
  sending_queue:
    enabled: true
    num_consumers: 2
    queue_size: 10
  retry_on_failure:
    enabled: true
    initial_interval: 10s
    max_interval: 60s
    max_elapsed_time: 10m
  tls:
    insecure_skip_verify: true
Last generated: 2026-04-13