Cloudflare has announced Cloudflare Traces in open beta, extending automatic tracing beyond Workers to the rest of the request path.
In one trace, users can see security rules, transformations, cache decisions, routing, Worker execution, and origin handling, with the trace continuing through Cloudflare services, at the origin, or elsewhere in the stack.
The move represents a long-term investment in OpenTelemetry and aims to make Cloudflare the most observable part of a customer’s stack.
WHAT CLOUDFLARE TRACES REVEALS IN A SINGLE TRACE
Traces capture each supported step as a span, including timing, outcomes, and relevant attributes, enabling a single view of a request’s path through Cloudflare. TechStaged has also covered Cloudflare advances pledge to make features accessible to all, rolling out enterprise-grade tools to pay-as-you-go and free plans.
- Security rule evaluation and outcomes
- Transformations and how they affect the request
- Routing decisions and which routes matched
- Caching behavior and origin handling
- Worker execution and interactions with services like KV, R2, D1, and Durable Objects
END-TO-END TRACING AND CONTEXT PROPAGATION
Cloudflare Traces supports end-to-end trace context propagation, accepting and forwarding W3C traceparent headers to join traces begun outside Cloudflare.
Cloudflare can forward a new traceparent header to origins, allowing other instrumented services to continue the trace, whether within Cloudflare or in external systems.
ENABLEMENT, CONTROLS, AND WORKFLOW
Tracing can be enabled on any domain via the Cloudflare dashboard or automated setup by an agent, giving you visibility used for debugging Cloudflare itself and your stack.
- Baseline sampling rate controls overall data volumes
- Trace Rules override sampling for matching traffic
EXPORT, INVESTIGATION, AND INTEROPERABILITY
Cloudflare Traces can export spans to any OTLP-compatible destination, placing Cloudflare telemetry alongside data from the rest of your observability stack.
The Cloudflare Observability MCP server provides an API that enables agents to query traces and related telemetry, facilitating comparison of failed and successful traces and linking findings back to code.
PRICING AND ROADMAP
Traces will be part of Cloudflare’s unified Observability pricing model, with usage-based ingestion and retention charges.
- 50 GB of ingestion per billing cycle
- 10 GB-month of storage per billing cycle
- $0.25 per GB ingested
- $0.10 per GB-month stored
- Pricing changes take effect December 1, 2026
WHAT COMES NEXT AFTER OPEN BETA
Cloudflare plans broader automatic instrumentation across the HTTP request path (including DDoS rules and Access) and the Workers execution path (Workflows, Queues, Pipelines).
Authenticated context propagation, ad hoc tracing, and OpenTelemetry API support in Workers are on the roadmap, along with longer retention up to 365 days.
- Broader automatic instrumentation across more spans
- Authenticated propagation for trusted callers
- Ad hoc tracing on demand
- OpenTelemetry API enhancements in Workers
- Retention extended to 365 days
GETTING STARTED AND AVAILABILITY
Cloudflare Traces is available in open beta from the dashboard, via API, or with Terraform, and supports exporting traces to OTLP destinations.
- Enable tracing on any domain
- Use the API or Terraform to provision tracing
- Export traced data to an OTLP endpoint
RELATED COVERAGE
- Cloudflare advances pledge to make features accessible to all, rolling out enterprise-grade tools to pay-as-you-go and free plans
- GitHub Copilot code review gains API access and a new default effort level
- GitHub posits AI is reshaping developer work, urges three skills to sharpen
- Cloudflare launches Web Search API via AI Gateway with live-internet grounding
- Developer Tools articles
SOURCES
- Cloudflare Blog: Introducing Cloudflare Traces: follow requests through our entire platform Published · Primary source
