Introducing Vercel Drains: Complete observability data, anywhere

This post announces the rebranding of Vercel Log Drains to Vercel Drains and expands their functionality to include exporting OpenTelemetry traces, Web Analytics events, and Speed Insights metrics. It details the importance of unified observability data beyond just logs, highlighting how correlated signals (logs enriched with trace IDs) provide a continuous view of application behavior. The post describes two methods for draining data: custom drains to any HTTP endpoint with configurable data types, sampling rates, and formats (JSON, NDJSON, Protobuf), and turnkey integration drains with vendors like Dash0, Statsig, Datadog, Logflare. It emphasizes the advantage of end-to-end observability by tying performance spikes to specific traces and logs, and notes that traces follow the OpenTelemetry protocol for compatibility with various APM tools. Drains are available on Pro and Enterprise plans, billed at $0.50 per GB.