---
title: "Collector"
description: "the one OpenTelemetry collector: its receivers, its processors, and its exporters"
section: concepts
address: /concepts/collector
contract: 0476e35e6e275db5
---

# Collector

the one OpenTelemetry collector: its receivers, its processors, and its exporters

[figure: Collector is a definition at platform scope. The drawing shows its fields and the objects that they point at.]

| property | value |
|---|---|
| kind | definition |
| scope | platform |
| key | its name |
| store | postgres |
| family | observability |



## Fields


| field | type | required | note |
|---|---|---|---|
| `receivers` | `[one of otlp-grpc \| otlp-http]` | yes |  |
| `processors` | `[one of redact-secrets \| attribute-allow-list \| batch \| memory-limit]` | yes | redaction runs first |
| `exporters` | [SignalExport](/concepts/signalexport) | yes |  |
| `listener` | [Listener](/concepts/listener) | yes | on the private network only |
| `buffer_limit_bytes` | `bytes` | yes | a role's local buffer when the collector is unreachable; past it, metrics are dropped and a request is never blocked |



## Routes that use it
No route takes or returns Collector directly. The record holds it, and the objects that point at it reach it.