Components

The OpenTelemetry Collector is made up of components that handle telemetry data. Each component has a specific role in the data pipeline.

Component Types

• Receivers - Collect telemetry data from various sources and formats
• Processors - Transform, filter, and enrich telemetry data
• Exporters - Send telemetry data to observability backends
• Connectors - Connect two pipelines, acting as both exporter and receiver
• Extensions - Provide additional capabilities like health checks

Stability Levels

Each component has a stability level that indicates its maturity:

• stable - Ready for production use
• beta - Mostly stable, but may have minor changes
• alpha - Early development, expect breaking changes
• development - Experimental, subject to change or removal
• unmaintained - No longer actively maintained

For signal-based components (receivers, processors, exporters, connectors), stability is shown per signal type (traces/metrics/logs).