Last updated: August 7, 2026
Span Metrics
dash0.spans
Counts the number of spans ingested by Dash0.
View the dash0.spans metric in Dash0
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Instrument | Counter |
| Unit | {span} |
| Stability |  |
dash0.spans is a synthetic metric: it is not stored as a metric time series,
but computed on-the-fly from the ingested span data. It can be filtered and
grouped by any span or resource attribute.
Because it is derived from 100 % of the ingested spans (before sampling), it provides accurate request-rate figures regardless of the sampling configuration.
Deprecated PromQL alias: dash0_spans_total.
Synthetic metrics do not expose attributes by default. Attributes are
materialised through PromQL aggregations, e.g.
sum by (service_name) ({otel_metric_name="dash0.spans"}) yields one
time series per value of service.name.
dash0.spans.duration
Distribution of span durations as a histogram.
View the dash0.spans.duration metric in Dash0
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Instrument | Histogram |
| Unit | s |
| Stability | |
dash0.spans.duration is a synthetic metric: it is not stored as a metric
time series, but computed on-the-fly from the ingested span data. It can be
filtered and grouped by any span or resource attribute.
Because it is derived from 100 % of the ingested spans (before sampling), it provides accurate latency distributions regardless of the sampling configuration.
Deprecated PromQL aliases: dash0_spans_duration_seconds_bucket,
dash0_spans_duration_seconds_sum, dash0_spans_duration_seconds_count.
Synthetic metrics do not expose attributes by default. Attributes are materialised through PromQL aggregations.
dash0.spans.red
Exponential histogram of span durations used for RED (Rate, Errors, Duration) metrics.
View the dash0.spans.red metric in Dash0
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Instrument | Histogram |
| Unit | s |
| Stability |  |
dash0.spans.red is generated the basis of 100% of received spans, before any sampling
is applied. Unlike the synthetic dash0.spans.duration metric, dash0.spans.red is
stored as a real metric time series with a fixed set of attributes.
The metric uses an exponential histogram instrument, which provides high accuracy across a wide range of durations without requiring predefined bucket boundaries.
This metrics exists only in conjunction with Intelligent Edge.
Attributes:
| Key | Stability | Requirement Level | Value Type | Description | Example Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
dash0.operation.name | | Required | string | Human-readable name for the logical operation a span belongs to. [1] | GET /api/users; SELECT ... FROM orders; publish orders-topic |
dash0.operation.type | | Required | string | The type of the logical operation a span belongs to. [2] | http; db; rpc; messaging; headless; rum; unknown |
otel.span.kind | | Required | string | The span kind, as defined by the OpenTelemetry specification. | SERVER; CLIENT; INTERNAL; PRODUCER; CONSUMER |
otel.span.status.code | | Required | string | The span status code, as defined by the OpenTelemetry specification. | UNSET; OK; ERROR |
service.name | | Required | string | Logical name of the service. [3] | shoppingcart |
[1] dash0.operation.name: Derived at ingestion time from span attributes using pattern templates defined by
operation naming rules
(e.g., GET /api/users for HTTP, SELECT ... FROM my-table for database).
Cardinality reduction is applied automatically.
Can be overridden by setting the attribute before telemetry reaches Dash0.
[2] dash0.operation.type: Determined at ingestion time by evaluating span attributes against a prioritised
set of operation naming rules.
Cannot be overridden by users; Dash0 always computes it from the span data.
[3] service.name: MUST be the same for all instances of horizontally scaled services. If the value was not specified, SDKs MUST fallback to unknown_service: concatenated with process.executable.name, e.g. unknown_service:bash. If process.executable.name is not available, the value MUST be set to unknown_service.