Dify Observability & Monitoring with OpenTelemetry

SigNoz has released a guide for setting up observability and monitoring on Dify agent workflows using OpenTelemetry, enabling users to export traces and metrics to SigNoz for unified dashboards and alerting. The integration requires a SigNoz account or self-hosted instance, a Dify self-hosted instance, and configuration of OpenTelemetry environment variables in Dify's `.env` file to send telemetry data to SigNoz. This allows developers to track AI and LLM workflow performance, analyze correlated traces and metrics, and improve system reliability and user experience.

Overview This guide walks you through setting up observability and monitoring for Dify using OpenTelemetry https://opentelemetry.io/ and exporting traces and metrics to SigNoz. With this integration, you can observe and track various metrics for your Dify agent workflows. Monitoring Dify agents with telemetry ensures full observability across your AI and LLM workflows. By leveraging SigNoz, you can analyze correlated traces and metrics in unified dashboards, configure alerts, and gain actionable insights to continuously improve reliability, responsiveness, and user experience. Prerequisites - A SigNoz Cloud account https://signoz.io/teams/ with an active ingestion key or Self Hosted SigNoz instance https://signoz.io/docs/install/self-host/ - A Dify self-hosted instance. Follow the Dify quickstart guide https://docs.dify.ai/en/self-host/quick-start/docker-compose to get set up Monitoring Dify For more information on instrumenting your Dify workflows with OpenTelemetry, refer to the Dify OpenTelemetry configuration https://docs.dify.ai/en/self-host/configuration/environments otlp-%2F-opentelemetry-configuration docs. Step 1: Configure OpenTelemetry in your Dify .env file Open the .env file in your Dify /docker directory and add the following environment variables: ------------------------------ OTLP Collector Configuration ------------------------------ ENABLE OTEL=true OTLP BASE ENDPOINT=https://ingest.<region .signoz.cloud:443 OTEL EXPORTER OTLP HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<your-ingestion-key OTEL EXPORTER OTLP PROTOCOL=http/protobuf OTEL EXPORTER TYPE=otlp OTEL SAMPLING RATE=1.0 OTEL BATCH EXPORT SCHEDULE DELAY=5000 OTEL MAX QUEUE SIZE=2048 OTEL MAX EXPORT BATCH SIZE=512 OTEL METRIC EXPORT INTERVAL=60000 OTEL BATCH EXPORT TIMEOUT=10000 OTEL METRIC EXPORT TIMEOUT=30000 <region : Your SigNoz Cloud region https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/signoz-cloud/overview/ endpoint <your-ingestion-key : Your SigNoz ingestion key https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/signoz-cloud/keys/ Most steps are identical. To adapt this guide, update the endpoint and remove the ingestion key header as shown in Cloud → Self-Hosted https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/cloud-vs-self-hosted/ cloud-to-self-hosted . Step 2: Apply the required code change In docker/docker-compose.yaml , find the x-shared-api-worker-env block and add the following line alongside the other OTLP variables: OTEL EXPORTER OTLP HEADERS: ${OTEL EXPORTER OTLP HEADERS:-} This forwards the OTEL EXPORTER OTLP HEADERS value from your .env file into the API and worker containers so the OpenTelemetry SDK can read it. Step 3: Restart Dify with the applied changes From your /docker directory, run: docker compose up -d This restarts all Dify services with the updated environment variables, enabling OpenTelemetry export to SigNoz. Cloud support is coming soon. Stay tuned for updates. View Traces and Metrics in SigNoz Your Dify usage should now automatically emit traces and metrics. You should be able to view traces in SigNoz Cloud under the traces tab: When you click on a trace in SigNoz, you'll see a detailed view of the trace, including all associated spans, along with their events and attributes. You should be able to see Dify related metrics in SigNoz Cloud under the metrics tab: When you click on any of these metrics in SigNoz, you'll see a detailed view of the metric, including attributes: Troubleshooting Troubleshooting troubleshooting If you don't see your telemetry data: Verify network connectivity - Ensure your application can reach SigNoz Cloud endpoints Check ingestion key - Verify your SigNoz ingestion key is correct Wait for data - OpenTelemetry batches data before sending, so wait 10-30 seconds after making API calls Try a console exporter — Enable a console exporter locally to confirm that your application is generating telemetry data before it’s sent to SigNoz Next Steps You can also check out our custom Dify dashboard https://signoz.io/docs/dashboards/dashboard-templates/dify-dashboard/ which provides specialized visualizations for monitoring your Dify usage. The dashboard includes pre-built charts specifically tailored for LLM usage, along with import instructions to get started quickly. Setup OpenTelemetry Collector Optional Setup OpenTelemetry Collector Optional setup-opentelemetry-collector-optional What is the OpenTelemetry Collector? Think of the OTel Collector as a middleman between your app and SigNoz. Instead of your application sending data directly to SigNoz, it sends everything to the Collector first, which then forwards it along. Why use it? Cleaning up data — Filter out noisy traces you don't care about, or remove sensitive info before it leaves your servers. Keeping your app lightweight — Let the Collector handle batching, retries, and compression instead of your application code. Adding context automatically — The Collector can tag your data with useful info like which Kubernetes pod or cloud region it came from. Future flexibility — Want to send data to multiple backends later? The Collector makes that easy without changing your app. See Switch from direct export to Collector https://signoz.io/docs/opentelemetry-collection-agents/opentelemetry-collector/switch-to-collector/ for step-by-step instructions to convert your setup. For more details, see Why use the OpenTelemetry Collector? https://signoz.io/docs/opentelemetry-collection-agents/opentelemetry-collector/why-to-use-collector/ and the Collector configuration guide https://signoz.io/docs/opentelemetry-collection-agents/opentelemetry-collector/configuration/ . Additional resources: - Set up alerts https://signoz.io/docs/product-features/alert-management for high latency or error rates - Learn more about querying traces https://signoz.io/docs/product-features/trace-explorer - Explore log correlation https://signoz.io/docs/product-features/logs-explorer