--- title: Using Drains product: vercel url: /docs/drains/using-drains canonical_url: "https://vercel.com/docs/drains/using-drains" last_updated: 2026-07-03 type: how-to prerequisites: - /docs/drains related: - /docs/plans/pro-plan - /docs/plans/enterprise - /docs/integrations - /docs/drains/reference/logs - /docs/drains/reference/traces summary: Learn how to configure drains to forward observability data to custom HTTP endpoints, S3 buckets, and integrations. install_vercel_plugin: npx plugins add vercel/vercel-plugin --- # Using Drains > **🔒 Permissions Required**: Drains You can add drains to your project by following the configuration steps below. When you configure the destination, choose whether to send data to a [custom HTTP endpoint](#custom-endpoint), write Audit Log data to an [S3 bucket](#s3-bucket), or use a [native integration](#native-integrations) or [external integration](#external-integrations) to send your data to popular services. ## Configuring Drains Teams on [Pro](/docs/plans/pro-plan) and [Enterprise](/docs/plans/enterprise) plans can configure drains to forward observability data. Audit Log Drains are available only on [Enterprise](/docs/plans/enterprise) plans. You can send data to custom HTTP endpoints, send Audit Log data to Amazon S3, or use [Vercel Marketplace](/marketplace) integrations for logs and traces. - ### Add a drain From the Vercel dashboard, go to **Team Settings** > [**Drains**](https://vercel.com/d?to=%2F%5Bteam%5D%2F%7E%2Fsettings%2Fdrains\&title=Go+to+Drains+settings) and click **Add Drain**. - ### Choose data type Select the type of observability data you want to drain: - **Logs**: Runtime, build and static logs from your deployments - **Traces**: Distributed tracing data using [OTLP/HTTP](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otlp/#otlphttp) (OTLP/gRPC is not supported) - **Speed Insights**: Performance metrics and web vitals - **Web Analytics**: Page views and custom events - **Audit Log**: Team activity events At any time, you can also add an [external integration](#external-integrations) to available [connectable account](/docs/integrations#connectable-accounts) log drain integrations by clicking the **External Integrations** link on the top right of the **Add Drain** side bar. - ### Configure the drain Provide a name for your drain and select which projects should send data to your endpoint. You can choose all projects or select specific ones. The drain type determines which configuration options you can set: - **Log**: Configure the [log source](/docs/drains/reference/logs#log-sources), [environment](/docs/drains/reference/logs#log-environments), and advanced sampling rate controls. - **Trace**: Configure the project and advanced sampling rate controls. - **Speed Insights**: Configure the project and a basic sampling rate. - **Web Analytics**: Configure the project and a basic sampling rate. - **Audit Log**: Applies to the whole team. Project selection, filters, and sampling rules are not available. Configure the sampling rate to control the volume of data sent to your drain. This can help manage costs when you have high traffic volumes. For detailed log source, environment, and sampling options, see [Additional configuration for logs](/docs/drains/reference/logs#log-sources). - ### Configure the sampling rules (optional) For **Log** and **Trace** drains, add sampling rules to define how much data reaches your destination: 1. If no rules exist, click **Add sampling rule**. 2. Choose the environment you want to sample from. 3. Set the sampling percentage. 4. (Optional) Specify a request path prefix. Leave it blank to apply the rule to every path. Example workflows: - Launch-day monitoring: sample **100%** of production traffic when you launch a new feature, then decrease to **10%** once traffic stabilizes. - Static coverage: always collect **5%** from `/docs` so you can spot regressions on a static documentation site. Rules run from top to bottom. Requests that match a rule use that rule’s sampling rate, and any other requests are dropped. If you do not add rules, the drain forwards **100%** of data to the destination. - ### Configure destination Choose how you want to receive your drain data by selecting the [**Custom Endpoint**](#custom-endpoint), [**S3 Bucket**](#s3-bucket), [**Splunk**](#splunk), or [**Native Integrations**](#native-integrations) section in the sidebar. #### Custom endpoint Configure a custom HTTP endpoint to receive drain data for any data type. **Endpoint URL** This is the URL of the endpoint we will send your data to. The request will be sent over HTTPS using the POST method. Make sure your endpoint responds with a 200 OK status code. **Format** Choose the delivery format based on your data type: - **Logs**: JSON or NDJSON (see [Logs reference](/docs/drains/reference/logs)) - **Traces**: JSON or Protobuf over OTLP/HTTP (see [Traces reference](/docs/drains/reference/traces)) - **Speed Insights**: JSON or NDJSON (see [Speed Insights reference](/docs/drains/reference/speed-insights)) - **Web Analytics**: JSON or NDJSON (see [Analytics reference](/docs/drains/reference/analytics)) - **Audit Log**: JSON or NDJSON (see [Audit Log Drains reference](/docs/drains/reference/audit-logs)) **Signature Verification Secret (Optional)** You can secure your endpoint by comparing the `x-vercel-signature` header with this secret. See [Securing your Drains](/docs/drains/security#secure-drains) for implementation details. A secret will be automatically generated for you, and you can change it and provide your own secret at any time. **Custom Headers (Optional)** Add custom headers for authentication, identification, or routing purposes. Common use cases include: - **Authentication**: Bearer tokens, API keys, or custom auth headers - **Routing**: Headers to route requests to specific services or regions - **Identification**: Custom headers to identify the source or type of data - **Content negotiation**: Headers to specify preferred response formats Format headers as `Header-Name: Header-Value` with one header per line. #### S3 bucket Configure an S3 bucket destination to write Audit Log data directly to Amazon S3. S3 bucket destinations are available only for Audit Log Drains. Before creating the drain, configure AWS IAM permissions and collect the S3 bucket path, encoding, role ARN, region, and any server-side encryption or Object ACL values required by your bucket. See [Drain Audit Logs to S3](/docs/drains/audit-logs-to-s3) for the full AWS setup. #### Splunk Configure a Splunk destination to forward Audit Log data to your Splunk HTTP Event Collector (HEC). Splunk destinations are available only for Audit Log Drains. Enter your HEC host and HEC token. Vercel wraps each event in the Splunk HEC event envelope. See [Drain Audit Logs to Splunk](/docs/drains/audit-logs-to-splunk) for HEC setup. #### Native integrations Native integrations are available for log and traces data. You have 2 options: 1. Installed Products If you've already installed a marketplace integration product that supports drains, you can select it here. The integration will handle endpoint configuration automatically. 2. Available Products Browse and install available product integrations for this drain type: - Click **Install** on any available product. This opens the Marketplace integration creation page in a new window. - Update the default product name if needed and select a subscription plan - Click **Create** and click **Done** once the integration has been created - Go back to the Project's settings Drains page and select your newly created integration You can also add a Drain from your team's **Integrations** section in the sidebar - Select the installed integration from the list. (Trace data shows under "Observability" and log data shows under "Logging") - Click **Manage** and select your installed product - Under **Drains**, click **Add Drain** - Configure which project you would like to send data from and click **Create Drain** - ### Create the drain Once you have configured all settings, click **Create Drain**. If you configured a custom endpoint, it will be tested automatically when you create the drain. Vercel will immediately start forwarding data based on your configuration. You can test your endpoint anytime by clicking the **Test** button to ensure it receives the data correctly. ## Logs and traces correlation Vercel automatically correlates logs with distributed traces when you setup [Tracing](/docs/tracing). Any logs generated during traced requests are enriched with correlation identifiers: - `traceId` - The trace identifier - `spanId` - The span identifier This correlation happens automatically without code changes. For example, this log: ```js console.log('User logged in', { userId: 123 }); ``` Will be automatically enriched with [trace and span identifiers](/docs/drains/reference/logs#json-format-fields). **Limitations**: Only applies to user code logs during traced requests, not build-time logs. ## Drain integrations You can create Drains with native integrations for the following data types by using [native integrations](#native-integrations) during the configuration step: - **Log drains**: [Logging services](https://vercel.com/marketplace/category/logging) like [Dash0](https://vercel.com/marketplace/dash0) - **Trace drains**: [Observability services](https://vercel.com/marketplace/category/observability) like [Braintrust](https://vercel.com/marketplace/braintrust) for OpenTelemetry trace streaming ### External integrations 1. From the Vercel dashboard, go to **Team Settings** > [**Drains**](https://vercel.com/d?to=%2F%5Bteam%5D%2F%7E%2Fsettings%2Fdrains\&title=Go+to+Drains+settings) and click **Add Drain**. 2. Click the **External Integrations** link on the top right of the **Add Drain** side modal. 3. From the **External Integration Log Drains** modal, select the installed or available external integration you would like to use and follow the steps to create the drain to that service. Learn more about [native integrations](/docs/integrations#native-integrations) and [external (connectable accounts) integrations](/docs/integrations#connectable-accounts). ## Errored Drains Occasionally your drain endpoints can return an error. If more than 80% of drain deliveries fail or the number of failures exceed 50 for the past hour, we will send a notification email and indicate the error status on your Drains page. ![Image](https://vercel.com/front/docs/logs/drain-error-light.png) ## Managing your active Drains 1. From your team's [dashboard](/dashboard), open **Settings** in the sidebar and select [**Drains**](https://vercel.com/d?to=%2F%5Bteam%5D%2F%7E%2Fsettings%2Fdrains\&title=Go+to+Drains+settings) 2. In available Drains, click on the menu on the right and click **Pause** to pause a drain or **Resume** to resume it 3. In available Drains, click on the menu on the right and click **Delete** to delete a drain ## More resources For more information on Drains and how to use them, check out the following resources: - [Drains overview](/docs/drains) - [Log Drains reference](/docs/drains/reference/logs) - [Traces reference](/docs/drains/reference/traces) - [Speed Insights reference](/docs/drains/reference/speed-insights) - [Analytics reference](/docs/drains/reference/analytics) - [Audit Log Drains reference](/docs/drains/reference/audit-logs) --- [View full sitemap](/docs/sitemap)