Low-Value Span Issues

Learn more about Low-Value Span issues and how to reduce noise and span volume in your traces.

A low-value span issue is raised when Sentry detects a span that is sent frequently but adds little value to your traces. These spans clutter the trace view, make it harder to spot the spans that actually help with debugging, and contribute to your stored span volume and cost.

Sentry groups matching spans into a single low-value span issue. These issues are set to LOW priority and are excluded from the default issue search. To find them, open the Configuration view on the Issues page or filter with issue.category:configuration.

The Issue Details page for a low-value span issue summarizes the offending span and its projected impact:

  • Affected span — A summary of the span Sentry detected. Click through to see matching spans in Trace Explorer.
  • Span count — Projected 30-day volume of this span, extrapolated from a recent sample.
  • Estimated cost — Projected 30-day cost of ingesting and storing this span, when available.
  • Average duration — Average duration of this span in the analyzed sample.

How you fix the issue depends on where the span comes from. The Troubleshooting section of the issue tells you whether the span originates from SDK automatic instrumentation or from your own custom instrumentation, and shows a ready-to-use snippet for filtering it.

Seer Autofix can also generate and apply the fix for you directly from the issue.

  • Automatic instrumentation — Drop the span before it is sent using your SDK's filtering options. See Filtering.
  • Custom instrumentation — Remove the span from your code, or add attributes that make it more useful. See Custom Instrumentation.

  • Low-value span issues do not trigger workflow notifications.
  • They are excluded from the default issue search. Open the Configuration view on the Issues page or filter with issue.category:configuration to find them.
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