Tempo

Tempo is an open source, high-scale distributed tracing backend from Grafana Labs. Designed for cost-efficient, object storage-backed trace storage with minimal operational overhead. Integrates with popular open telemetry standards including OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin, and W3C Trace Context. Provides HTTP query APIs for trace retrieval, search, tag discovery, and metrics generation.

Tempo publishes 6 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Health API, Metrics API, Search API, and 3 more. Tagged areas include Distributed Tracing, Observability, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, and Monitoring.

The Tempo catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.

Tempo’s developer surface includes documentation, release notes, engineering blog, getting-started guide, and 25 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

37.5/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 26/100 agent aware self hosted · AGPL-3.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

1 published contract

Distributed Tracing Observability OpenTelemetry Grafana Monitoring

What this lets a business do 1

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

SaaS Platform Operations Management

BC-4220

MetricsSearchTraces

GET /api/traces/{traceID} GET /api/metrics/query_range GET /api/search

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 37.5/100 · thin

Contract Quality 9.4 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 4.7 / 15

Access Clarity 2.4 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.6 / 10

Contract Governance 2.5 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 2.4 / 15

Open Source Surface 6.5 / 10

Agent readiness — 26/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 6 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 9 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 4 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Open Source Surface applies to this provider. This product is open source and we read its repository directly, so Open Source Surface carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from what the repository actually publishes — a security policy, a contribution guide, a release history, a code of conduct — read live from the provider rather than inferred from our own catalog pointers. This facet adds; nothing was taken away to make room for it. An open-source project is not excused from the commercial facets, because exemption would strip it of the points it does earn. If we have the wrong repository, or this product is not open source, say so on your provider repo and we will drop the facet rather than have you publish against it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics does not apply to this provider. The published contracts declare no write operations, and a read-only API cannot create-or-update. The facet is excluded from this provider's denominator entirely — not scored zero. A reference or data API is not deficient for being unable to upsert.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because both conditional facets apply and carry 25 points together. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)

6 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 15.8 — up to +16.8 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 31.0 — up to +13.8 composite points
Contract Quality scores 50.2 — up to +12.5 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/tempo/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/tempo to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 6

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Tempo TraceQL API

TraceQL is a query language developed for Grafana Tempo that allows filtering and selecting spans within traces. The TraceQL search API endpoint enables rich span-level filterin...

Tempo Health API

Health and readiness endpoints

Tempo Metrics API

Generate metrics from trace data

Tempo Search API

Search traces and spans using TraceQL

Tempo Tags API

Discover tag keys and values in trace data

Tempo Traces API

Retrieve individual traces by trace ID

Open Collections 6

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Grafana Tempo HTTP Health API

OPEN COLLECTION

Grafana Tempo HTTP Health Metrics API

OPEN COLLECTION

Grafana Tempo HTTP Health Search API

OPEN COLLECTION

Grafana Tempo HTTP Health Tags API

OPEN COLLECTION

Grafana Tempo HTTP Health Traces API

OPEN COLLECTION

Grafana Tempo HTTP API

OPEN COLLECTION

Tempo API pricing

Not yet checked against Tempo's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Tempo's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Tempo Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Tempo Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

Service Levels 1

Uptime the provider promises or reports, as SLA4OAI. Read from its own pages; APIs.io runs no monitors.

Tempo

SLA

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Tempo Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Tempo Context

7 classes · 14 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 2

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Tempo — jsonschema rules

5 rules · 3 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

Tempo API Rules

9 rules · 2 errors 6 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Grafana Tempo Trace

1 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Tempo Trace Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 2

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Tempo Get Trace Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Tempo Search Traceql Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Tempo Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Tempo Trust Center

SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, GDPR, CSA STAR

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Tempo Agentic Access

7 operations

7 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 4

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

Documentation

OpenAPI

JSONSchema

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 4

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONStructure

SpectralRules

Vocabulary

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

CodeOfConduct

CodeOfConduct

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

TrustCenter

TrustCenter

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 5

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

IssueTracker

ReleaseNotes

Community

Slack

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

License

License

Company 3

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 3

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

Helm Chart

Helm Chart

Docker Hub

Docker Hub

Source (apis.yml)

deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: AGPL-3.0
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: high
  source:
  - license
  - openapi
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  try_now_blocked_by: loopback
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/tempo.png
name: Tempo
description: Tempo is an open source, high-scale distributed tracing backend from Grafana Labs. Designed for cost-efficient,
  object storage-backed trace storage with minimal operational overhead. Integrates with popular open telemetry standards
  including OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin, and W3C Trace Context. Provides HTTP query APIs for trace retrieval, search, tag
  discovery, and metrics generation.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/tempo/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-25'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
tags:
- Distributed Tracing
- Observability
- OpenTelemetry
- Grafana
- Monitoring
apis:
- name: Tempo TraceQL API
  description: TraceQL is a query language developed for Grafana Tempo that allows filtering and selecting spans within traces.
    The TraceQL search API endpoint enables rich span-level filtering using a pipeline syntax with attribute matchers, duration
    filters, and structural operators.
  humanURL: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/traceql/
  baseURL: http://localhost:3200
  tags:
  - Distributed Tracing
  - Query Language
  - TraceQL
  - Observability
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/traceql/
  - type: Reference
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/traceql/query-editor/
- aid: tempo:tempo-health-api
  name: Tempo Health API
  description: Health and readiness endpoints
  humanURL: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  baseURL: http://localhost:3200
  tags:
  - Health
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/tempo-health-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo
- aid: tempo:tempo-metrics-api
  name: Tempo Metrics API
  description: Generate metrics from trace data
  humanURL: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  baseURL: http://localhost:3200
  tags:
  - Metrics
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/tempo-metrics-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo
- aid: tempo:tempo-search-api
  name: Tempo Search API
  description: Search traces and spans using TraceQL
  humanURL: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  baseURL: http://localhost:3200
  tags:
  - Search
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/tempo-search-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo
- aid: tempo:tempo-tags-api
  name: Tempo Tags API
  description: Discover tag keys and values in trace data
  humanURL: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  baseURL: http://localhost:3200
  tags:
  - Tags
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/tempo-tags-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo
- aid: tempo:tempo-traces-api
  name: Tempo Traces API
  description: Retrieve individual traces by trace ID
  humanURL: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  baseURL: http://localhost:3200
  tags:
  - Traces
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/tempo-traces-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/api_docs/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/tempo-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/tempo-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/tempo-finops.yml
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/tempo-capability-edges.yml
  name: Tempo Business Capability Map
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo/issues
- type: CodeOfConduct
  url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: License
  name: AGPL-3.0
  url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/tempo-agentic-access.yml
- type: TrustCenter
  url: security/tempo-trust-center.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/tempo-domain-security.yml
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tempohq
- type: Website
  url: https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/grafana
- type: Helm Chart
  url: https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
- type: Docker Hub
  url: https://hub.docker.com/r/grafana/tempo
- type: ReleaseNotes
  url: https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases
- type: Community
  url: https://community.grafana.com/c/grafana-tempo/
- type: Slack
  url: https://grafana.slack.com/archives/C01BULREPHA
- type: Blog
  url: https://grafana.com/blog/tag/traces/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/getting-started/
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/_original/tempo-openapi.yml
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/tempo-context.jsonld
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/tempo-trace-schema.json
- type: JSONStructure
  url: json-structure/tempo-trace-structure.json
- type: SpectralRules
  url: rules/tempo-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/tempo-vocabulary.yml
- type: Integrations
  url: https://grafana.com/integrations/
integrations:
- name: All visualization integrations
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
  url: https://apievangelist.com

Tempo API — frequently asked questions

Does Tempo have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 6 APIs from Tempo, including Tempo TraceQL API, Tempo Health API and Tempo Metrics API, and 3 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Tempo API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 5 OpenAPI specifications for Tempo, each linked for download from this page.

How much does the Tempo API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Tempo, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Tempo API ready for AI agents?

Tempo has a Kin Score of 37.5 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 25.5 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
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apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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