OpenRouter Observability & Monitoring with OpenTelemetry

Overview

This guide walks you through setting up observability and monitoring for OpenRouter using OpenTelemetry and exporting traces to SigNoz. With this integration, you can observe and track various metrics for your OpenRouter applications and llm usage.

Monitoring OpenRouter in your AI applications with telemetry ensures full observability across your AI and LLM workflows. By leveraging SigNoz, you can analyze correlated traces, logs, and metrics in unified dashboards, configure alerts, and gain actionable insights to continuously improve reliability, responsiveness, and user experience.

Prerequisites

• A SigNoz Cloud account with an active ingestion key or Self Hosted SigNoz instance
• Internet access to access OpenRouter API and send telemetry data to SigNoz Cloud
• An OpenRouter account and OpenRouter API key. You can get it from the OpenRouter API Keys page.

Monitoring OpenRouter

Step 1: Configure broadcasting traces from OpenRouter to OTel Collector

For more information on setting up traces from OpenRouter refer to the OpenRouter broadcast guide.

Enable Broadcast in OpenRouter

Go to Settings > Observability and toggle Enable Broadcast.

Configure OpenTelemetry Collector

Click 'Add Destination +' next to the OpenTelemetry Collector entry

and enter:

• Endpoint: https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces
• Headers:

{
  "signoz-ingestion-key": "<your-ingestion-key>"
}

• <region>: Your SigNoz Cloud region
• <your-ingestion-key>: Your SigNoz ingestion key

Test and Save

Click Test Connection to verify the setup. Once there is a success message, click the "Add" button.

Your OpenRouter calls should now be traced and sent to SigNoz.

Step 2: Use the OpenRouter API

For more information on getting started with OpenRouter in your environment, refer to the OpenRouter quickstart guide.

import requests
import json

response = requests.post(
  url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions",
  headers={
    "Authorization": "Bearer <OPENROUTER_API_KEY>",
    "HTTP-Referer": "<YOUR_SITE_URL>", # Optional. Site URL for rankings on openrouter.ai.
    "X-Title": "<YOUR_SITE_NAME>", # Optional. Site title for rankings on openrouter.ai.
  },
  data=json.dumps({
    "model": "openai/gpt-5.2", # Optional
    "messages": [
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "What is SigNoz?"
      }
    ]
  })
)

fetch('https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer <OPENROUTER_API_KEY>',
    'HTTP-Referer': '<YOUR_SITE_URL>', // Optional. Site URL for rankings on openrouter.ai.
    'X-Title': '<YOUR_SITE_NAME>', // Optional. Site title for rankings on openrouter.ai.
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    model: 'openai/gpt-5.2',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: 'What is SigNoz',
      },
    ],
  }),
});

curl https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENROUTER_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
  "model": "openai/gpt-5.2",
  "messages": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "content": "What is SigNoz?"
    }
  ]
}'

View Traces in SigNoz

Your OpenRouter agent usage should now automatically emit traces.

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.

Next Steps

You can also check out the OpenRouter Dashboard Template which provides specialized visualizations for monitoring your OpenRouter usage in applications. The dashboard includes pre-built charts specifically tailored for LLM usage, along with import instructions to get started quickly.

Additional resources:

• Set up alerts for high latency or error rates
• Learn more about querying traces
• Explore log correlation