Grafana Cloud Adaptive Metrics

Adaptive Metrics analyses your Prometheus metrics usage and suggests aggregation rules that reduce series count without breaking any queries. Rules pre-aggregate high-cardinality metrics into lower-cardinality forms before storage.

How it works:

1. Adaptive Metrics scans your metric usage (dashboards, alerts, recording rules) over a lookback window
2. It identifies labels that are never queried for a given metric
3. It generates aggregation rules that drop those labels, reducing series count
4. The original high-cardinality metric is still ingested but the aggregated form is what gets stored long-term

Billing: Grafana Cloud charges per Active Series (series that received a sample in the last hour). Adaptive Metrics reduces your Active Series count, directly reducing your bill.

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Step 1: Access Adaptive Metrics

In Grafana Cloud: Home > Adaptive Metrics (or via the app menu).

You need the Grafana Cloud Metrics plan. Adaptive Metrics is available on all paid plans.

Key views:

• Overview - total series count, estimated savings from pending recommendations
• Recommendations - auto-generated aggregation rules ready to apply
• Rules - active rules and their effect
• Usage analysis - which metrics are queried vs. unused

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Step 2: Understand the recommendations

Recommendations are sorted by estimated series reduction (highest savings first).

Each recommendation shows:

• Metric name - the metric being aggregated
• Current series - series count before the rule
• Projected series - series count after applying the rule
• Labels to drop - labels that are never queried for this metric
• Labels to keep - labels that appear in at least one query
• Lookback period - how many days of query history was analysed

Review before applying:

# Check if any dashboards or alerts use the label being dropped
# Replace METRIC_NAME and LABEL_NAME with actual values
grep -r "METRIC_NAME" /path/to/dashboards/ --include="*.json" | grep "LABEL_NAME"

Or in Grafana: use Explore > Metrics to query the metric and check which labels are present and used.

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Step 3: Apply a recommendation

Via the UI:

1. Go to Adaptive Metrics > Recommendations
2. Review the recommended labels to keep/drop
3. Click Apply on rules you want to enable
4. Rules take effect within ~5 minutes

Via the API:

# List recommendations
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  "https://adaptive-metrics.grafana.net/api/v1/recommendations" | \
  jq '.recommendations[] | {metric_name, current_series, projected_series, estimated_reduction_percent}'

# Apply a recommendation by ID
curl -s -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://adaptive-metrics.grafana.net/api/v1/recommendations/<RECOMMENDATION_ID>/apply"

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Step 4: Create custom aggregation rules

If you know which labels to drop without waiting for recommendations, create rules directly.

Rule format:

# Aggregation rule: keep only job and instance labels for process_cpu_seconds_total
rules:
  - match_metric: process_cpu_seconds_total
    drop_labels:
      - version
      - go_version
      - service_name
    aggregations:
      - type: sum
        without: []   # empty = keep only the labels not in drop_labels

Via the API:

curl -s -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://adaptive-metrics.grafana.net/api/v1/rules" \
  -d '{
    "rules": [
      {
        "metric_name": "process_cpu_seconds_total",
        "match_type": "MATCH_TYPE_EXACT",
        "drop_labels": ["version", "go_version"],
        "aggregations": [{"type": "AGGREGATION_TYPE_SUM"}]
      }
    ]
  }'

Aggregation types:

Type	Use case
sum	Counters, request counts, byte totals
max	Gauges where you want the worst-case (e.g. CPU max across pods)
min	Gauges where you want the best-case
avg	Rate metrics, averages

For counters, always use sum. Averaging counters produces incorrect rates.

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Step 5: Handle metrics with regex matching

Use regex rules to cover families of metrics with similar label patterns:

# Apply a rule to all metrics matching a pattern
curl -s -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://adaptive-metrics.grafana.net/api/v1/rules" \
  -d '{
    "rules": [
      {
        "metric_name": "go_.*",
        "match_type": "MATCH_TYPE_REGEX",
        "drop_labels": ["go_version", "version", "service_instance_id"],
        "aggregations": [{"type": "AGGREGATION_TYPE_SUM"}]
      }
    ]
  }'

Common label families safe to drop globally:

• version, app_version, go_version - rarely queried in PromQL
• service_instance_id, pod_uid, container_id - ultra-high cardinality
• git_commit, build_date - static labels that inflate series for no query value

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Step 6: Identify unused metrics

Unused metrics (never queried in any dashboard, alert, or recording rule) can be dropped entirely.

In the UI: Adaptive Metrics > Usage analysis > "Unused metrics" tab

Via the API:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  "https://adaptive-metrics.grafana.net/api/v1/usage-analysis?filter=unused" | \
  jq '.metrics[] | {metric_name, series_count, last_queried}'

Before dropping a metric entirely:

1. Confirm it is not used in any Grafana dashboard (search by metric name in dashboard JSON)
2. Confirm it is not used in any Prometheus/Mimir alert rule or recording rule
3. Check with the team that owns the service if the metric is part of an SLO

Drop unused metrics via remote_write filtering in Alloy:

prometheus.remote_write "grafana_cloud" {
  endpoint {
    url = "https://prometheus-prod-XX.grafana.net/api/prom/push"
    write_relabel_config {
      source_labels = ["__name__"]
      regex         = "unused_metric_name|another_unused_metric"
      action        = "drop"
    }
  }
}

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Step 7: Adaptive Logs (companion product)

For log volume reduction, Adaptive Logs works the same way for Loki:

# Check log volume recommendations
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>" \
  "https://adaptive-logs.grafana.net/api/v1/recommendations" | \
  jq '.recommendations[] | {stream_selector, estimated_reduction_percent}'

Log pattern: drops low-value log streams (e.g. debug logs from non-critical services) during high-volume periods or permanently.

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Step 8: Measure the impact

After applying rules, monitor the effect over 24-48 hours:

# Active Series count over time (visible in Grafana Cloud Metrics Usage dashboard)
grafanacloud_instance_active_series

# Series reduction from adaptive metrics
grafanacloud_instance_active_series_dropped_by_aggregation_rules

In Grafana Cloud: Home > Usage > Metrics shows before/after series counts and the billing impact of active rules.

Expected timeline:

• Rules take effect within ~5 minutes of creation
• Full billing impact visible after the next billing cycle (usually within 1 hour)
• The original high-cardinality metric continues to be ingested but doesn't count toward billing for the labels that were dropped

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References

• Adaptive Metrics documentation
• Adaptive Logs documentation
• Cardinality management in Prometheus
• Grafana Cloud pricing