otelite

A lightweight OpenTelemetry collector that stores traces and logs in SQLite. Designed for local development and debugging - no complex infrastructure required.

Features

• Receives OTLP traces and logs over HTTP
• Stores data in SQLite for easy querying
• Supports both JSON and Protobuf encodings
• Single binary with no external dependencies
• Built-in CLI for querying stored data

Build

Requires Go 1.24+

make build

Or directly:

go build -o otelite main.go

Usage

Start the collector

./otelite server -port 4318 -db otel.db

Configure your application to send OTLP data to http://localhost:4318.

Query stored data

# List recent traces
./otelite query -db otel.db "SELECT service_name, span_name, trace_id FROM traces ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 10"

# Find traces by service
./otelite query -db otel.db "SELECT * FROM traces WHERE service_name = 'my-service'"

# View logs
./otelite query -db otel.db "SELECT service_name, severity_text, body FROM logs ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 20"

Makefile shortcuts

make start   # Start server in background
make stop    # Stop background server
make clean   # Remove database and binary

HTTP Endpoints

Endpoint	Method	Description
/v1/traces	POST	Receive OTLP trace data
/v1/logs	POST	Receive OTLP log data
/traces	GET	Query stored traces (JSON)

OTLP Compatibility

Supported

• HTTP transport (port 4318)
• Binary Protobuf encoding (application/x-protobuf)
• JSON Protobuf encoding (application/json)
• Traces signal
• Logs signal

Not Supported

• gRPC transport (port 4317)
• Metrics signal
• Profiles signal
• Compression (gzip)
• Authentication
• Retry-After / backpressure headers

Database Schema

traces table: id, timestamp, trace_id, span_id, parent_span_id, service_name, span_name, kind, start_time, end_time, status_code, raw_json

logs table: id, timestamp, trace_id, span_id, service_name, severity_number, severity_text, body, log_timestamp, raw_json

License

Apache License 2.0