---
title: "Agent Configuration"
source: OpenTelemetry Documentation
source_url: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io
licence: CC-BY-4.0
domain: engineering
subdomain: opentelemetry-docs
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

The agent is highly configurable, either by:

- Passing configuration properties from the CLI
- Setting
  [environment variables](/docs/specs/otel/configuration/sdk-environment-variables/)

## Configuration properties

Here's an example of agent configuration via configuration properties:

```sh
opentelemetry-instrument \
    --traces_exporter console,otlp \
    --metrics_exporter console \
    --service_name your-service-name \
    --exporter_otlp_endpoint 0.0.0.0:4317 \
    python myapp.py
```

Here's an explanation of what each configuration does:

- `traces_exporter` specifies which traces exporter to use. In this case, traces
  are being exported to `console` (stdout) and with `otlp`. The `otlp` option
  tells `opentelemetry-instrument` to send the traces to an endpoint that
  accepts OTLP via gRPC. In order to use HTTP instead of gRPC, add
  `--exporter_otlp_protocol http/protobuf`. The full list of available options
  for traces_exporter, see the Python contrib
  [OpenTelemetry Instrumentation](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-python-contrib/tree/main/opentelemetry-instrumentation).
- `metrics_exporter` specifies which metrics exporter to use. In this case,
  metrics are being exported to `console` (stdout). It is currently required for
  your to specify a metrics exporter. If you aren't exporting metrics, specify
  `none` as the value instead.
- `service_name` sets the name of the service associated with your telemetry,
  and is sent to your [Observability backend](/ecosystem/vendors/).
- `exporter_otlp_endpoint` sets the endpoint where telemetry is exported to. If
  omitted, the default [Collector](/docs/collector/) endpoint will be used,
  which is `0.0.0.0:4317` for gRPC and `0.0.0.0:4318` for HTTP.
- `exporter_otlp_headers` is required depending on your chosen Observability
  backend. For more information on OTLP exporter headers, see
  [OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS](/docs/languages/sdk-configuration/otlp-exporter/#otel_exporter_otlp_headers).

## Environment Variables

In some cases, configuring via
[environment variables](/docs/languages/sdk-configuration/) is more preferred.
Any setting configurable with a command-line argument can also be configured
with an Environment Variable.

You can apply the following steps to determine the correct name mapping of the
desired configuration property:

- Convert the configuration property to uppercase.
- Prefix environment variable with `OTEL_`

For example, `exporter_otlp_endpoint` would convert to
`OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT`.

## Python-specific Configuration

There are some Python specific configuration options you can set by prefixing
environment variables with `OTEL_PYTHON_`.

### Excluded URLs

Comma-separated regular expressions representing which URLs to exclude across
all instrumentations:

- `OTEL_PYTHON_EXCLUDED_URLS`

You can also exclude URLs for specific instrumentations by using a variable
`OTEL_PYTHON_<library>_EXCLUDED_URLS`, where library is the uppercase version of
one of the following: Django, Falcon, FastAPI, Flask, Pyramid, Requests,
Starlette, Tornado, urllib, urllib3.

Examples:

```sh
export OTEL_PYTHON_EXCLUDED_URLS="client/.*/info,healthcheck"
export OTEL_PYTHON_URLLIB3_EXCLUDED_URLS="client/.*/info"
export OTEL_PYTHON_REQUESTS_EXCLUDED_URLS="healthcheck"
```

### Request Attribute Names

Comma-separated list of names that will be extracted from the request object and
set as attributes on spans.

- `OTEL_PYTHON_DJANGO_TRACED_REQUEST_ATTRS`
- `OTEL_PYTHON_FALCON_TRACED_REQUEST_ATTRS`
- `OTEL_PYTHON_TORNADO_TRACED_REQUEST_ATTRS`

Examples:

```sh
export OTEL_PYTHON_DJANGO_TRACED_REQUEST_ATTRS='path_info,content_type'
export OTEL_PYTHON_FALCON_TRACED_REQUEST_ATTRS='query_string,uri_template'
export OTEL_PYTHON_TORNADO_TRACED_REQUEST_ATTRS='uri,query'
```

### Logging

There are some configuration options used to control the logs that are
outputted.

- `OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_CORRELATION`: to enable trace context injection into logs
  (true, false)
- `OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_FORMAT`: to instruct the instrumentation to use a custom
  logging format
- `OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_LEVEL`: to set a custom log level (info, error, debug,
  warning)
- `OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION`: controls whether the logging handler
  is configured automatically (true, false), enabled by default. Refer to
  [Logs Auto-Instrumentation](/docs/zero-code/python/logs-example/)
- `OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_CODE_ATTRIBUTES`: to enable addition of `code` attributes
  (`code.file.path`, `code.function.name`, `code.line.number`) to the logs
  (true, false)

Examples:

```sh
export OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_CORRELATION=true
export OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_FORMAT="%(msg)s [span_id=%(span_id)s]"
export OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_LEVEL=debug
export OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION=false
export OTEL_PYTHON_LOG_CODE_ATTRIBUTES=true
```

> Before OpenTelemetry Python 1.40.0 logs auto instrumentation was disabled by
> default and implemented in the `opentelemetry-sdk` package. Setting
> `OTEL_PYTHON_LOGGING_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_ENABLED` to `true` would have
> enabled it.

### Other

There are some more configuration options that can be set that don't fall into a
specific category.

- `OTEL_PYTHON_DJANGO_INSTRUMENT`: set to `false` to disable the default enabled
  state for the Django instrumentation
- `OTEL_PYTHON_ELASTICSEARCH_NAME_PREFIX`: changes the default prefixes for
  Elasticsearch operation names from "Elasticsearch" to whatever is used here
- `OTEL_PYTHON_GRPC_EXCLUDED_SERVICES`: comma-separated list of specific
  services to exclude for the gRPC instrumentation
- `OTEL_PYTHON_ID_GENERATOR`: to specify which IDs generator to use for the
  global Tracer Provider
- `OTEL_PYTHON_INSTRUMENTATION_SANITIZE_REDIS`: to enable query sanitization
- `OTEL_PYTHON_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_EXPERIMENTAL_GEVENT_PATCH`: set to
  `patch_all` to call gevent monkeypatch `patch_all` method before initializing
  the SDK

Examples:

```sh
export OTEL_PYTHON_DJANGO_INSTRUMENT=false
export OTEL_PYTHON_ELASTICSEARCH_NAME_PREFIX=my-custom-prefix
export OTEL_PYTHON_GRPC_EXCLUDED_SERVICES="GRPCTestServer,GRPCHealthServer"
export OTEL_PYTHON_ID_GENERATOR=xray
export OTEL_PYTHON_INSTRUMENTATION_SANITIZE_REDIS=true
export OTEL_PYTHON_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_EXPERIMENTAL_GEVENT_PATCH=patch_all
```

## Disabling Specific Instrumentations

The Python agent by default will detect a Python program's packages and
instrument any packages it can. This makes instrumentation easy, but can result
in too much or unwanted data.

You can omit specific packages from instrumentation by using the
`OTEL_PYTHON_DISABLED_INSTRUMENTATIONS` environment variable. The environment
variable can be set to a comma-separated list of instrumentations entry point
names to exclude from instrumentation. Most of the time the entry point name is
the same as the package name and it is set in the
`project.entry-points.opentelemetry_instrumentor` table in the package
`pyproject.toml` file.

For example, if your Python program uses the `redis`,`kafka-python` and `grpc`
packages, by default the agent will use the
`opentelemetry-instrumentation-redis`,
`opentelemetry-instrumentation-kafka-python` and
`opentelemetry-instrumentation-grpc` packages to instrument them. To disable
this, you can set
`OTEL_PYTHON_DISABLED_INSTRUMENTATIONS=redis,kafka,grpc_client`.
