Query distributed traces with Grafana Tempo TraceQL
domain: grafana.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Open the Tempo data source in Grafana Explore and switch to the TraceQL query editor
Write a span-set selector using curly braces with attribute filters such as service name, span kind, or custom attributes
Use the pipeline operator to chain conditions, for example filtering by duration or status after the initial selector
Use the aggregate functions such as count or duration quantile to produce metrics from trace data for dashboard panels
Save frequently used TraceQL queries as Grafana panel queries in a trace analytics dashboard
Known gotchas
TraceQL attribute searches are only efficient if the attribute is indexed in Tempo; searching non-indexed attributes requires a full scan and may time out on large datasets
TraceQL metric queries (aggregating over spans) require a minimum Tempo version; older deployments only support span-set queries
The default query time range in Grafana Explore may be broader than intended for trace searches, producing slow queries; narrow the time range before executing expensive TraceQL expressions
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