# Control trace volume with OpenTelemetry tail-based sampling

DevFeed: [Control trace volume with OpenTelemetry tail-based sampling](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/control-trace-volume-with-opentelemetry-tail-based-sampling-2243.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/control-trace-volume-with-opentelemetry-tail-based-sampling/>)

Author: Bill Meyer; Eddie Cai

Published: 2026-08-21T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Datadog | The Monitor blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/datadog-the-monitor-blog.md>)

Topics: [OpenTelemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/opentelemetry.md>), [Traces](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/traces.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tracing.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/observability.md>), [Application Performance Management (APM)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/apm.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/configuration.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>)

Tags: [apm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apm.md>), [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-systems.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [learn](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/learn.md>), [metrics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/metrics.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/observability.md>), [opentelemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/opentelemetry.md>), [rideshare](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rideshare.md>), [synthetic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/synthetic.md>), [traces](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/traces.md>)

## AI overview

A guide to using OpenTelemetry tail-based sampling to reduce exported trace volume while retaining errors, slow requests, and other diagnostically valuable traces. It explains the difference between head- and tail-based sampling, the role of Span Metrics, and the collector architecture required to evaluate complete traces.

## Source excerpt

Learn how to configure tail-based sampling in the OpenTelemetry Collector to drop noisy traces, keep the ones that matter, and control APM costs.