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sentry trace view

View detailed information about a distributed trace by its ID, including a hierarchical span tree.

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Usage

sentry trace view [<org>/<project>] <trace-id>

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Target Specification

sentry trace view <trace-id>              # auto-detect from DSN or config
sentry trace view <org>/<proj> <trace-id> # explicit org and project
sentry trace view <project> <trace-id>    # find project across all orgs
The trace ID is the 32-character hexadecimal identifier.

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Arguments

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trace-id
string
required
32-character hexadecimal trace identifierExample:
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de
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target
string
Optional target in format <org>/<project> or <project> (searches across orgs)If not provided, auto-detects from DSN in working directory or config defaults.

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Flags

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--json
boolean
default:"false"
Output trace data as JSON including summary and spansExample:
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --json
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--web
boolean
default:"false"
Open the trace in your default web browser instead of displaying in terminalAlias: -wExample:
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de -w
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--spans
number
default:"10"
Maximum depth of span tree to display. Set to 0 or use --spans no to disable span tree display.Example:
# Show deeper span tree
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --spans 20

# Disable span tree
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --spans 0
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --spans no

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Examples

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View a trace (auto-detect context)

sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de

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View trace with explicit org/project

sentry trace view my-org/my-project abc123def456abc123def456abc123de

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View trace with project slug (searches across orgs)

sentry trace view my-project abc123def456abc123def456abc123de

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Open trace in browser

sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --web
sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de -w

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View trace with deeper span tree

sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --spans 20

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View trace without span tree

sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --spans 0

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Output as JSON

sentry trace view abc123def456abc123def456abc123de --json

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Sample Output

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Human-Readable Format

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Trace Summary
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Trace ID:        abc123def456abc123def456abc123de
Duration:        2.4s
Spans:           45
Projects:        3 (frontend, backend-api, payment-service)
Root:            GET /api/checkout
Timestamp:       2024-03-05 14:23:45 UTC
Status:          ok

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Span Tree
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

▼ http.server GET /api/checkout                           2.4s  [frontend]
  ├─ db.query SELECT * FROM cart WHERE user_id = ?        45ms  [frontend]
  ├─ http.client POST /api/payment/process                1.8s  [backend-api]
  │  ├─ db.query BEGIN TRANSACTION                        12ms  [backend-api]
  │  ├─ http.client POST /external/stripe/charge          1.5s  [payment-service]
  │  │  ├─ http.request POST https://api.stripe.com       1.2s  [payment-service]
  │  │  └─ db.query INSERT INTO transactions              34ms  [payment-service]
  │  ├─ db.query UPDATE orders SET status = 'paid'        23ms  [backend-api]
  │  └─ db.query COMMIT                                   18ms  [backend-api]
  ├─ http.client GET /api/inventory/reserve               120ms [backend-api]
  └─ cache.set user:123:cart                              8ms   [frontend]

Tip: Open in browser with 'sentry trace view --web abc123def456abc123def456abc123de'

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JSON Format

{
  "summary": {
    "traceId": "abc123def456abc123def456abc123de",
    "duration": 2.4,
    "spanCount": 45,
    "projectCount": 3,
    "projects": ["frontend", "backend-api", "payment-service"],
    "rootOperation": "GET /api/checkout",
    "timestamp": "2024-03-05T14:23:45Z",
    "status": "ok"
  },
  "spans": [
    {
      "span_id": "def456abc123def4",
      "parent_span_id": null,
      "trace_id": "abc123def456abc123def456abc123de",
      "op": "http.server",
      "description": "GET /api/checkout",
      "start_timestamp": 1709649825.0,
      "timestamp": 1709649827.4,
      "status": "ok",
      "project": "frontend"
    },
    {
      "span_id": "456abc123def456a",
      "parent_span_id": "def456abc123def4",
      "trace_id": "abc123def456abc123def456abc123de",
      "op": "db.query",
      "description": "SELECT * FROM cart WHERE user_id = ?",
      "start_timestamp": 1709649825.1,
      "timestamp": 1709649825.145,
      "status": "ok",
      "project": "frontend"
    }
  ]
}

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Notes

  • Organization and project context is required to fetch the trace. If not provided explicitly, it’s resolved from DSN detection or config defaults.
  • The trace API searches around the current timestamp to locate trace data.
  • Traces are typically retained for 90 days in Sentry.
  • The span tree shows a hierarchical view of all operations across services, helping identify performance bottlenecks.
  • Use --spans 0 to disable span tree fetching for faster output when you only need trace metadata.
  • The -w flag is useful for quickly jumping to the Sentry web UI for interactive trace exploration.
  • Cross-project traces show which services were involved in handling the request.

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See Also

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