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Sending Claude API traces to Datadog and other platforms with OpenTelemetry

2026/10/19

On 14 October 2026 Anthropic launched OpenTelemetry export in beta⁠[1]. Messages API requests, tool uses and Claude Managed Agents sessions can be recorded as OpenTelemetry spans⁠[1,2].

The traces can be viewed in the observability platform you already use⁠[2]. Anthropic describes uses such as debugging failed or slow requests, tracking token spend and latency, and building evals from real traffic⁠[2].

There are two ways to collect them: SDK tracing and API tracing⁠[2]. With SDK tracing, registering a tracer provider in the Python, TypeScript, C#, Go, Java, PHP or Ruby SDK records the requests of clients that use the SDK⁠[1,2].

With API tracing, adding a destination in the Claude Console records requests from any client⁠[1,2]. Adding a destination requires the Admin permission⁠[2]. It is supported on the Claude Platform and Claude Platform on AWS⁠[2].

Any observability platform that accepts OTLP can be a destination, and the partners listed include Datadog, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Langfuse, LangSmith, New Relic and Sentry⁠[2].

Whether spans include prompts and responses is set per destination and per SDK client⁠[2]. The default, Metadata only, sends identifiers, timing, status, token counts and similar data⁠[2]. Full content adds the prompts and responses⁠[2].

For organizations with a HIPAA, FERPA or K-12 data-handling restriction, API destinations export only metadata regardless of their setting⁠[2]. Organizations with zero data retention can still use Full content⁠[2]. For Messages API requests, the content is held only in memory until it is delivered⁠[2].

With Full content, each span holds up to 0.75 MB of content by default⁠[2]. That fits a 200K-token context of English text⁠[2]. Content over the limit is shortened, and anthropic.content.truncated is set to true⁠[2].

Keeping a full 1 million token context needs about 4 MB⁠[2]. The limit can be changed with traces.max_content_bytes in the SDK, or in the advanced settings of a destination in the Console⁠[2].