How to Forward Logs in App Platform
Validated on 16 Nov 2021 • Last edited on 10 Mar 2026
App Platform is a fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that deploys applications from Git repositories or container images. It automatically builds, deploys, and scales components while handling all underlying infrastructure.
In addition to viewing basic logs in App Platform, you can forward your application’s runtime logs to external log management providers. This lets you search, index, and retain logs using the provider’s tools. Forwarding logs does not count towards an application’s bandwidth usage. At this time, dedicated egress IP addresses cannot be used for log forwarding.
Currently, App Platform supports log forwarding to DigitalOcean Managed OpenSearch, OpenSearch, Datadog, and Logtail.
Configure Log Forwarding Using the Control Panel
To configure log forwarding, go to the Apps page, select your app, then click the Settings tab.
In the Log Forwarding section, click Edit and select your log collection provider. Then provide the applicable values for your provider:
| Provider | Settings |
|---|---|
| Managed OpenSearch | Destination name: A label for identifying the forwarding target. DigitalOcean OpenSearch database: The name of your DigitalOcean Managed OpenSearch database cluster. User: The username you use to access the cluster. Defaults to doadmin. Index name (optional): The name of the OpenSearch index to forward the logs to. Defaults to logs.Forwarding logs to DigitalOcean Managed OpenSearch clusters with trusted sources enabled is not supported. To send logs to a managed OpenSearch cluster, first disable trusted sources. |
| OpenSearch | Destination name: A label for identifying the forwarding target. Endpoint: The endpoint URL of your OpenSearch cluster, in the format https://hostname:port. User: The username you use to access the cluster. Password: The password for the username you use to access the cluster. Index name (optional): The name of the OpenSearch index to forward the logs to. Defaults to logs. |
| Datadog | Destination name: A label for identifying the forwarding target. Endpoint: The provider endpoint where App Platform forwards the logs. Use the HTTP endpoint https://http-intake.logs.datadoghq.com/api/v2/logs. If you use a different Datadog site, such as US3, the endpoint uses a different subdomain. In the example of US3, the endpoint is https://http-intake.logs.us3.datadoghq.com/api/v2/logs. Check Datadog’s documentation to ensure you’re using the correct endpoint. API Key: The token generated by Datadog. For more information, see the Datadog documentation. |
| Logtail | Destination name: A label for identifying the forwarding target. Token: The token used to access a Rsyslog source in Logtail. For more information, see the Logtail documentation. |
Select specific resources to forward logs from, or select Forward logs from all compute resources.
Click Add Log Destination to enable remote logging for the provider.
Configure Log Forwarding Using the App Spec
To configure log forwarding using the app spec, add a log_destinations object to your app spec and specify the log consumer’s details. For example, the following configuration forwards logs to a DigitalOcean Managed OpenSearch cluster:
log_destinations:
- name: your_log_consumer_name
open_search:
cluster_name: your-opensearch-clusterSee the app spec reference for more information about the log_destinations object and the details for each log consumer.