Compatibility Overviewedit

Support for the Elastic APM Node.js agent follows the support schedule of Node.js itself to the end-of-life period of each version after its maintenance term. Versions of Node.js past their end-of-life date are not supported.

Some versions of Node.js contain bugs or issues that limit our ability to instrument them correctly. The following versions of Node.js are known to not be fully instrumented:

Support for Node.js 8.2.0 and above is experimental as it makes use of the experimental core API Async Hooks. If you experience any issues related to using Async Hooks, you can always disable the use of this API by setting the asyncHooks config option to false. Note however, that not all core Node.js API’s can be instrumented without the use of Async Hooks if running Node.js 8 or above.

Elastic Stack Compatibilityedit

This agent is compatible with APM Server v6.2.

Frameworksedit

Though you can use Elastic APM with any Node.js framework, we automate a few things for the most popular Node.js modules.

These are the frameworks that we officially support:

Custom Transactionsedit

By default transactions are named based on their matched HTTP route if the framework used is listed above. These modules override that behavior to give better insights into specialized HTTP servers:

Tracing and Instrumentationedit

The Node.js agent will automatically instrument the following modules to give you detailed performance metrics:

Better Stack Tracesedit

When viewing a span in Elastic APM, you’ll see where in your code you initiated the span (e.g. a database query).

Given the async nature of Node.js, it’s not possible for us to see further back than the last async boundary. We therefore make sure to monitor as close to your code as possible. But some modules will interfere with this monitoring by injecting an async call between your code and the actual monitored function.

We monitor these "offending" modules directly to give you a better experience.

The modules and versions listed below are the ones we support. If you use an unsupported version you might not be able to see your own code in the spans. This does not impact the stability of your application in any way - only the collected metrics.

If you don’t see your own code in spans, please create a new topic in the Elastic APM discuss forum and include information about your dependencies.

Continuityedit

The Elastic APM agent monitors async operations in your Node.js application to maintain awareness of which request is the active request at any given time. Certain modules can interfere with this monitoring if not handled properly.

Below is a list of modules known to cause issues with this monitoring. The versions listed are the versions we support. If you use an unsupported version you might experience missing spans. This does not impact the stability of your application in any way - only the collected metrics.

If you do experience missing spans in your performance metrics, please create a new topic in the Elastic APM discuss forum and include information about your dependencies and what data is missing.