tracing vs opentelemetry-otlp

Short answerBy steady daily use, tracing is bigger: 2,611,879 real downloads a day against 562,213 for opentelemetry-otlp (4.6x). 46,220 crates depend on tracing and 1,046 on opentelemetry-otlp. tracing last shipped 10 months ago, opentelemetry-otlp 15 days ago.

tracing

Foundational

Foundational and steady.

46,220 crates depend on it; no release in the last 90 days, so its count is all steady use.

Application-level tracing for Rust.

opentelemetry-otlp

Widely used

Widely used and steady.

1,046 crates depend on it; downloads don't spike on releases.

Exporter for the OpenTelemetry Collector

tracingopentelemetry-otlp · 100% = that crate's normal quiet day, so a spike to 300% is triple its usual traffic

Every number, side by side

Same window, same method	tracing	opentelemetry-otlp
Real downloads a day	2,611,879	562,213
Crates that depend on it	46,220	1,046
Last release	0.1.44, 10 months ago	0.33.1, 15 days ago
Trend vs the field	+1%	+5%
Release-window share	0.0%	4.2%
Downloads in the window	235,971,565	50,208,503
All-time downloads	965,769,957	179,053,933
Versions published	46	28
License	MIT	Apache-2.0
MSRV	1.65.0	1.75.0
First published	Nov 27, 2017	Aug 14, 2020

Which to pick

Downloads tell you what is common, not what fits. Each crate's own description above says what it is for; when the jobs differ, pick by the job.
When both fit, prefer the one more crates depend on (tracing, 46,220 dependents): more eyes, more answered questions, and you may already have it in your tree.
Check the release dates against your own pace: tracing 10 months ago, opentelemetry-otlp 15 days ago.

Also in this space

opentelemetry-protoEstablishedProtobuf generated files and transformations616,473 a day, 166 dependents opentelemetry-semantic-conventionsEstablishedSemantic conventions for OpenTelemetry389,047 a day, 321 dependents mioEstablishedLightweight non-blocking I/O3,332,252 a day, 624 dependents futuresFoundationalAn implementation of futures and streams featuring zero allocations, composability, and iterator-like interfaces2,405,900 a day, 26,505 dependents

Compare 4 of them side by side →

Method

Real downloads = the median day with no release that day or the day before, from the crates.io API (Jul 27, 2026 to Oct 23, 2026). Raw crates.io counts include CI and bots and run high (why); the method is from our 90-day study.

Up next

Another comparison: Same method, same window. Foundational and steady vs foundational and steady.log vs tracingRead it next →

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