OpenTelemetry vs Jaeger: Standard vs Tracing Backend
OpenTelemetry is the vendor-neutral standard for generating and exporting telemetry; Jaeger is a backend and UI that stores and visualizes traces.
OpenTelemetry (OTel) is the CNCF standard - SDKs, APIs, and a collector - for instrumenting apps and exporting traces, metrics, and logs to any backend. Jaeger is a distributed tracing backend with storage and a query UI. They are complementary: OTel produces the data, Jaeger (among others) stores and displays it.
| OpenTelemetry | Jaeger | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Instrumentation + export standard | Tracing backend + UI |
| Scope | Traces, metrics, logs | Traces |
| Vendor neutrality | Yes (export anywhere) | A backend |
| Storage | No (exports) | Yes |
| Best for | Standardized instrumentation | Viewing and querying traces |
In practice
These are not really either/or: instrument your apps with OpenTelemetry, then send traces to a backend - which can be Jaeger. OTel future-proofs you against vendor lock-in; Jaeger gives you a mature open-source place to store and explore traces. Jaeger now embraces OTel ingestion directly, so the modern pattern is OTel SDKs feeding a Jaeger (or other) backend.
Note
You can trace CI and build steps with OTel too. The builds run on CI runners; faster managed runners shorten them.
The verdict
They work together: use OpenTelemetry to instrument and export, and Jaeger (or another backend) to store and visualize traces. Standardize on OTel; pick Jaeger as one solid open-source tracing backend.