Observability Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jun 18, 2026 4 min read

The OTel Vendor Compatibility Matrix

Not all vendors are OTel-native. The compatibility matrix, the gotchas, and what to test before committing.

Native vendors

Honeycomb, Lightstep, Grafana Cloud accept OTel directly. No translation layer; no quirks.

Best for OTel-first stacks.

Datadog, New Relic, Splunk accept OTel via a translation layer. Some metadata is lost; some semantic conventions are reinterpreted.

Test the translation. The vendor's UI may not match what you sent.

Send sample telemetry; verify it shows up correctly. Test traces specifically; this is where translations break most often.

Test high-cardinality metrics. Cost models differ; surprises hide in the per-series billing.