Quick answer
Cloudflare announced that agent tracing is free during beta and will use existing Workers Observability pricing starting October 1, 2026. The launch table listed 200,000 events per day with 3-day retention for Workers Free, and 20 million events included per month plus $0.60 per additional million with 7-day retention for Workers Paid.
That is a dated source check, not a future price guarantee. Verify the live pricing and account before budgeting.
Launch pricing snapshot
| Tier | Events stated on August 4, 2026 | Retention stated |
|---|---|---|
| Workers Free | 200,000 per day | 3 days |
| Workers Paid | 20 million included per month; $0.60 per additional million | 7 days |
Cloudflare says every span is an observability event. The Agents view may show the model and tool operations you care about while the full Worker trace contains additional SDK and infrastructure spans that also count.
Estimate volume before rollout
- Trace a representative success, retry, timeout, and subagent workflow.
- Count total spans in the full Workers trace, not only visible agent operations.
- Multiply by expected turns per day and add a peak/retry margin.
- Separate payload storage and external OTLP destination costs.
- Check whether 3 or 7 days is enough for incident detection and review.
- Set sampling and alert thresholds before increasing traffic.
For trace anatomy, use the observability guide. For sensitive payload decisions, use the session replay privacy guide.
Retention is an operating constraint
A short retention window can expire the trace before a weekly review. Align incident alerts, trace export, evidence preservation, and deletion policy with the actual plan. Exporting to an OTLP destination may extend access, but it also creates a separate security, retention, and billing boundary.
Do not treat token metadata as a final invoice. Reconcile provider usage, Workers events, sampling, retries, and external observability costs against the relevant billing surfaces.
Frequently asked questions
Is agent tracing free?
It was announced as free during beta, with Workers Observability pricing scheduled for October 1, 2026. Verify the live status before launch.
What counts as an event?
Every span, including Worker-level spans not visible in the Agents view.
How long are traces retained?
The launch table listed 3 days on Free and 7 days on Paid. Confirm the current plan and account settings.
Official sources
Source check: August 6, 2026. Verify beta status, included events, overage rate, retention, sampling, and destination costs in the live account.