Opentelemetry-collector-contrib

What is Opentelemetry-collector-contrib?

The opentelemetry-collector-contrib image packages the OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib, a vendor-agnostic, extensible service for receiving, processing, and exporting telemetry data-logs, metrics, and traces.

This "contrib" variant builds on the core OpenTelemetry Collector and includes a wider set of receivers, processors, exporters, and extensions contributed by the community. It’s designed for observability pipelines that need integrations with tools like Prometheus, Jaeger, Zipkin, OTLP, Datadog, AWS X-Ray, and more.

The image is used in Kubernetes clusters, edge gateways, and cloud infrastructure to standardize telemetry ingestion and forwarding. It’s ideal for teams implementing full OpenTelemetry-based observability pipelines, especially when bridging between different formats or systems.

How to use this image

The collector runs with a custom YAML configuration file that defines pipelines for receiving and exporting telemetry data.

Basic usage with local config:

<code>docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/otel-config.yaml:/etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml \  -p 4317:4317 -p 4318:4318 \  otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:latest</code>

Example config structure (otel-config.yaml):

<code>yamlCopyEditreceivers:  otlp:    protocols:      grpc:      http:exporters:  logging:    loglevel: debugservice:  pipelines:    traces:      receivers: [otlp]      exporters: [logging]</code>

Kubernetes deployment (Helm or Operator):

‍This image is commonly deployed via OpenTelemetry Helm charts or the OpenTelemetry Operator for cluster-level telemetry routing.

Ports:

• 4317 (OTLP/gRPC)
• 4318 (OTLP/HTTP)
• Others may be exposed depending on enabled receivers (e.g., Prometheus, Zipkin)

Image variants

Published under otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib, this image is versioned by release and has no OS-specific variants.‍

otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:latest

Tracks the latest contrib build with the full set of community-supported components.Use for testing or dev clusters that follow OpenTelemetry HEAD closely.

‍otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:<version>

Tagged by semantic version (e.g. 0.99.0, 0.88.0). Recommended for production to ensure compatibility with specific config/component sets.This image includes the core collector binary plus dozens of contributed plugins (e.g. for AWS, GCP, Splunk, Datadog, Prometheus). It is more flexible but larger than the core image.