# Setup External API Monitoring

SigNoz Cloud - This page applies to SigNoz Cloud editions.

Self-Host - This page applies to self-hosted SigNoz editions.

## Overview

External API Monitoring works automatically with properly instrumented applications. This document explains the requirements needed for this feature to work.

## Setup

To enable API monitoring, make sure that your application is instrumented correctly. For details about instrumenting application for your language/framework, please refer [this document](/content/docs/instrumentation/index.html).

For every external call, spans must include the below [attributes](/content/blog/opentelemetry-spans/#what-are-span-attributes/index.html):

- `server.address` or `net.peer.name`
- `url.full` or `http.url`

These span attributes are used to automatically derive API calls.

**Note**  
In case of manual instrumentation, ensure that all the client to server calls are instrumented and the above attributes are added explicitly for each outbound request.

## Verification

To verify that your instrumentation is correctly configured:

1. Generate some traffic that includes external API calls
2. Navigate to the External API Monitoring section in SigNoz
3. Check if your external domains appear in the list

_External API monitoring Overview_

## Troubleshooting

If your external API domains/endpoints aren't appearing in the monitoring interface:

- Check that your service is properly [instrumented](/content/docs/instrumentation/index.html) and sending traces to SigNoz
- Verify that your HTTP client libraries are being instrumented
- For manual instrumentation, ensure you're adding all required attributes
- If you're using OpenTelemetry collector, review its configuration to ensure it's forwarding all attributes

## Next Steps

Once your application is properly instrumented, head to the [Overview section](/content/docs/external-api-monitoring/overview/index.html) to learn how to use External API Monitoring to gain insights into your external API dependencies.

Last updated: February 1, 2026