Cloudflare Traces Turns the Proxy Layer into OpenTelemetry Spans, with New Volume-Based Pricing
Cloudflare Traces moves observability pricing from flat fees to volume-based ingestion and retention starting December 1—practitioners need to audit sampling strategies now.
Why it matters
Cloudflare extended automatic tracing across its proxy layer (Workers, security rules, cache, routing) as OpenTelemetry spans, and switched to consumption-based pricing. For enterprises running Workers or heavy traffic through Cloudflare, this changes operational cost visibility and sampling decisions.
The key facts
11 to knowCloudflare Traces now in open beta
Automatic tracing spans: Workers, security rules, transformations, cache, routing, origin handling
W3C traceparent header support and forwarding
Trace Rules enable targeted sampling
Pricing model changes to ingestion and retention volume starting December 1, 2026
No pricing per-unit rates disclosed in source
Cloudflare Traces in open beta
Automatic tracing across Workers, security rules, transformations, cache, routing, origin handling
OpenTelemetry span export with W3C traceparent header support
Pricing model moves to ingestion and retention volume
Pricing change effective December 1, 2026
Go to the source
InfoQ AI/MLinfoq.com
Publisher excerpt: Cloudflare has put Traces into open beta, extending automatic tracing from Workers to security rules, transformations, cache, routing and origin handling as OpenTelemetry spans. Traces accept and forward W3C traceparent headers, and Trace Rules allow targeted sampling. Pricing moves to ingestion…