# CloudWatch OpenTelemetry Metrics
<a name="metrics-otel-overview"></a>

OpenTelemetry metrics in CloudWatch use the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) for ingestion and PromQL for querying. This model supports open-source metric names, up to 150 labels per data point, and includes 15 months of storage with no per-metric charges.

Use OpenTelemetry metrics when:
+ You are starting new workloads and want the recommended path
+ You need high-cardinality labels (pod names, custom tags, OTel semantic conventions)
+ You want to query with PromQL (industry-standard, compatible with existing Grafana dashboards)
+ You use Container Insights OTel, Application Signals, or AWS vended OTel metrics

## In this section
<a name="metrics-otel-overview-in-this-section"></a>


| Page | Description | 
| --- | --- | 
| [Send metrics using OpenTelemetry](metrics-otel-send.md) | Publish custom metrics through the OTLP endpoint using OTel SDKs or collectors | 
| [AWS vended metrics in OpenTelemetry format](CloudWatch-OTelEnrichment.md) | Enable AWS services to publish metrics as OTel data points with resource tags. Uses OTel Vended Metric Enrichment to convert existing AWS service metrics (Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, ELB, etc.) into the OTel path with full label enrichment — no agent or code changes required. | 
| [Query metrics with PromQL](CloudWatch-PromQL.md) | Query, aggregate, and filter OTel metrics using the Prometheus Query Language | 
| [OTel metrics pricing and storage](metrics-otel-pricing.md) | Per-GB ingestion pricing, included 15-month retention, no per-metric or API charges | 
| [Migrate from Classic to OTel metrics](metrics-otel-migrate.md) | Incremental migration from PutMetricData/EMF to OTLP |