# Always-on tracing for production and preview traffic By Steven Van · 2026-08-21 With always-on tracing, you can now debug your real user requests without reproducing them. [Vercel]()'s [always-on tracing]() continuously samples requests from production and preview traffic, so a real user request can be debugged without reproducing it. That's different from session tracing, which only captures requests made from your own browser. Nothing is collected until a sampling rule is added. Each rule sets a trace rate for an environment (All, Production, or Preview), optionally scoped to a path prefix such as /checkout, and rules can also be managed from the CLI with vercel traces config set, which updates the rate if run again for the same environment and path. - Infrastructure and outbound fetch spans are captured automatically. - Framework and custom spans require instrumenting the app with @vercel/otel. - Traces can be viewed in the Logs dashboard or with vercel traces get. Always-on tracing is in beta and available to teams on all plans, priced at **$0.50 per 1M span units**. Traces follow runtime log retention: 1 hour on Hobby, 1 day on Pro, and 3 days on Enterprise. [![]()]() ![Vercel]() Vercel The platform for frontend developers — deploy, preview, and scale web apps and AI agents with zero config. [View Vercel →]() Sources [Original source]() [Read Always-on tracing for production and preview traffic on Creators Toolbox]() --- Canonical source: https://creatorstoolbox.com/blog/vercel-always-on-tracing-for-production-and-preview-traffic