Send OTLP over HTTP/protobuf

The traces endpoint accepts OTLP in both protobuf and JSON over HTTP. Most OpenTelemetry SDKs default to protobuf, so in practice you point the exporter at the endpoint, set the auth header, and you are done.

POST https://traces.siteqwality.com/v1/traces
Authorization: Bearer <api-key>
Content-Type: application/x-protobuf

A successful export returns 202 Accepted.

Configure your SDK

Most SDKs read standard environment variables, so no code change is needed.

Signal-specific
Base endpoint

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT="https://traces.siteqwality.com/v1/traces"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_PROTOCOL="http/protobuf"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="Authorization=Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY"
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME="billing-api"

The signal-specific variable is used verbatim, so it must include the full /v1/traces path.

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="https://traces.siteqwality.com"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL="http/protobuf"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="Authorization=Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY"
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME="billing-api"

With the base variable the SDK appends /v1/traces itself. Do not include the path here or you will export to /v1/traces/v1/traces.

Content types

Header	Handling
`application/x-protobuf`	Protobuf. Use this one.
`application/json`	OTLP JSON.

Both produce identical stored spans. Parameters after a semicolon are ignored, so application/x-protobuf; charset=utf-8 is fine.

What is not supported

Getting these wrong produces confusing failures, so they are worth stating plainly.

gRPC is not supported. This is an HTTP endpoint only. OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc will not work; use http/protobuf.
Only traces. There is no OTLP endpoint for logs or metrics. Use the logs and metrics ingest APIs for those.
Compression is not handled. Leave OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_COMPRESSION unset. A gzipped body cannot be decoded and the export is rejected.
An empty export is rejected with a 400, rather than silently accepted.
Instrumentation scope name and version are discarded. Put anything you need to query on into span or resource attributes.

Batch sizing

Each ResourceSpans group becomes one internal message with a 250 KiB ceiling. The default OpenTelemetry batch size of 512 spans sits comfortably inside that.

If you have raised max_export_batch_size substantially, or your spans carry unusually large attributes, bring it back down rather than debugging intermittent export failures.

Verify it worked

Send some traffic, then look for the service:

curl -G https://api.siteqwality.com/traces/services \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SITEQWALITY_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "start_time=2026-08-02T00:00:00Z" \
  --data-urlencode "end_time=2026-08-02T23:59:59Z"

Your OTEL_SERVICE_NAME should appear. If it does not, check that the exporter is not using gRPC and that the Authorization header actually reached the endpoint.