Sentry Exporter

The Sentry Exporter routes telemetry from multiple services to different Sentry projects through a single collector instance. Without it, you'd need to configure separate DSNs for each project or set up additional routing connectors.

When to Use sentry vs otlphttp Exporter

Prerequisites

Collector Distribution

The Sentry Exporter is included in otelcol-contrib, the pre-built OpenTelemetry Collector distribution. There is no build step required, just download and run otelcol-contrib with your configuration. For the full specification, see the source code.

Auth Token

In your Sentry account, create an Internal Integration with the required permissions:

1. Navigate to Custom Integrations
2. Click Create New Integration
3. Choose Internal Integration (not Public)
4. Give it a name (e.g., "OTEL Collector")
5. Set permissions:
   • Organization: Read — required
   • Project: Read — required
   • Project: Write — required for auto_create_projects
6. Click Save Changes
7. After saving, click Create New Token
8. Copy the token and store it securely, you won't be able to see it again

export SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN="abc123..."

Organization Slug

In your Sentry account, go to General Settings to find your organization slug. Alternatively, you can find it in your Sentry URL: https://sentry.io/organizations/{org-slug}/

Configuration Reference

Required

Optional

Basic Configuration

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318

exporters:
  sentry:
    url: https://sentry.io
    org_slug: ${env:SENTRY_ORG_SLUG}
    auth_token: ${env:SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN}

processors:
  batch:

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [sentry]
    logs:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [sentry]

Routing Options

exporters:
  sentry:
    # ... required fields
    auto_create_projects: true

exporters:
  sentry:
    # ... required fields
    routing:
      attribute_to_project_mapping:
        orders-service: ecommerce-orders
        products-service: ecommerce-products
        api-gateway: ecommerce-gateway

exporters:
  sentry:
    # ... required fields
    routing:
      project_from_attribute: deployment.environment
      attribute_to_project_mapping:
        production: prod-monitoring
        staging: staging-monitoring

Rate Limiting

The exporter respects Sentry's rate limits automatically:

• Parses X-Sentry-Rate-Limits headers
• Tracks per-project, per-category (traces/logs) rate limit deadlines
• Returns throttle errors to the collector queue for retry
• Falls back to 60-second backoff on HTTP 429 without headers

Limitations