Logs

GlitchTip can ingest, store, and query application logs sent via the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP). Logs can be correlated with traces and errors for full observability.

Enabling Logs

Set the following environment variable on your GlitchTip server:

GLITCHTIP_ENABLE_LOGS=True

When disabled (the default), log events are rejected at ingest.

Sending Logs

GlitchTip accepts logs via the OpenTelemetry OTLP endpoint. Configure your application's OpenTelemetry SDK to export logs to your GlitchTip instance.

Python Example

pip install opentelemetry-sdk opentelemetry-exporter-otlp

from opentelemetry.sdk._logs import LoggerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk._logs.export import BatchLogRecordProcessor
from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http._log_exporter import OTLPLogExporter

logger_provider = LoggerProvider()
logger_provider.add_log_record_processor(
    BatchLogRecordProcessor(
        OTLPLogExporter(endpoint="https://your-glitchtip.example.com/api/0/envelope/")
    )
)

Consult the OpenTelemetry documentation for SDK setup in other languages.

Querying Logs

In the GlitchTip UI, navigate to your project's Logs page to browse and search logs.

Filtering

Level — Filter by severity: trace, debug, info, warn, error, fatal
Service — Filter by the service name that emitted the log
Environment — Filter by deployment environment
Full-text search — Search log message bodies

Trace Correlation

Logs that include a trace_id are automatically linked to their corresponding trace. Click a log entry's trace ID to navigate to the associated transaction and spans.

Retention and Storage

Log retention is controlled by these environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
`GLITCHTIP_LOG_RETENTION_DAYS`	`GLITCHTIP_RETENTION_DAYS` (90)	Total days to keep logs (hot + cold)
`GLITCHTIP_LOG_HOT_DAYS`	7	Days to keep logs in PostgreSQL before archival

When DuckDB cold storage is enabled, logs older than GLITCHTIP_LOG_HOT_DAYS are archived to Parquet files on S3 or the local filesystem. Archived logs remain queryable through the UI and API — GlitchTip queries hot storage (PostgreSQL) first and falls back to cold storage (DuckDB + Parquet) for older data.

CLI Access

You can query logs from the command line using the GlitchTip CLI:

glitchtip-cli logs list --org your-org