VictoriaMetrics Metrics Query

Query VictoriaMetrics HTTP API directly via curl. Covers instant/range queries, label/series discovery, alerts, rules, instance diagnostics, raw data export, metric usage statistics, and config debugging tools.

Environment

# $VM_METRICS_URL - base URL
#   cluster: export VM_METRICS_URL="https://vmselect.example.com/select/0/prometheus"
#   single: export VM_METRICS_URL="http://localhost:8428"
# $VM_AUTH_HEADER - auth header (set for prod, empty for local)

Auth Pattern

All curl commands use conditional auth — works for both prod and local:

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up" | jq .

When VM_AUTH_HEADER is empty, -H flag is omitted automatically.

Core Endpoints

Instant Query

# Query at current time
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up" | jq .

# Query at specific time
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up&time=2026-03-07T09:00:00Z" | jq .

Parameters: query (required), time (optional, RFC3339 or Unix seconds), step, timeout

Range Query

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query_range?query=rate(http_requests_total[5m])&start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z&end=2026-03-07T12:00:00Z&step=5m" | jq .

Parameters: query (required), start (required), end (optional), step (required). Times in RFC3339 or Unix seconds.

Labels Discovery

# All label names
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/labels" | jq '.data[]'

# Label values (label_name is a PATH parameter)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

# Label values filtered by series matcher
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={job="kubelet"}' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

Series Discovery

# Find series matching selector
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={namespace="myapp"}' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/series?limit=20" | jq '.data[].__name__'

Parameters: match[] (required), start, end, limit

Metric Metadata

# Search by metric name keyword
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/metadata?metric=http_request&limit=10" | jq .

Parameters: metric (search keyword), limit.

Alerts and Rules

# All firing/pending alerts
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/alerts" | jq '.data.alerts[]'

# All alerting and recording rules
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/rules" | jq '.data.groups[]'

Instance Diagnostics

# TSDB cardinality stats
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/tsdb" | jq .

# Currently executing queries
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/active_queries" | jq .

# Most frequent/slowest queries
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/top_queries?topN=10" | jq .

# Version info
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/buildinfo" | jq .

Export Raw Data

# Export raw samples as JSON lines (one JSON object per line)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]=http_requests_total' \
  -d 'start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z' -d 'end=2026-03-07T12:00:00Z' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/export" | head -5

# Export with reduced memory usage (for large exports)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={namespace="myapp"}' \
  -d 'start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z' -d 'end=2026-03-07T01:00:00Z' \
  -d 'reduce_mem_usage=1' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/export" > export.jsonl

Parameters: match[] (required), start, end, reduce_mem_usage. Output is JSON lines (not wrapped in a standard API response).

Each line: {"metric":{"__name__":"...","label":"value"},"values":[...],"timestamps":[...]}

Also available: /api/v1/export/csv (CSV format), /api/v1/export/native (binary, for import via /api/v1/import/native).

Series Count

# Total number of active time series
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/series/count" | jq .

Note: can be slow on large databases and may return slightly inflated values.

Metric Usage Statistics

# Which metrics are being queried, and how often
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?limit=20" | jq .

# Metrics queried <= N times (find unused/rarely-used metrics)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?limit=50&le=1" | jq .

# Filter by metric name pattern
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?match_pattern=vm_&limit=20" | jq .

Parameters: limit (max results), le (max query count threshold — find metrics queried at most N times), match_pattern (metric name prefix filter).

Flags (Non-Default)

# View non-default runtime flags (returns plain text, one flag per line — NOT JSON)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/flags"

Root-level endpoint. Returns plain text (not JSON), one flag per line. Shows only flags that differ from defaults — useful for debugging configuration.

Query Tools

These are ROOT-level endpoints, NOT under /api/v1/. On cluster mode, strip the /select/0/prometheus prefix to get the base host.

# Expand WITH expressions (returns text, not JSON)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/expand-with-exprs?query=WITH(x=up)x"

# Prettify MetricsQL query (returns JSON)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/prettify-query?query=rate(x[5m])" | jq .

Note: ${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*} strips everything from /select onward, yielding the base host. On single-node (local), VM_METRICS_URL has no /select prefix so it returns the URL unchanged.

Config Debug Tools

Root-level endpoints for debugging relabeling, downsampling, and retention configurations. These accept POST with form data. Primarily used via VMUI but accessible via curl.

# Debug metric relabeling rules — test how a metric is transformed
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  -d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}' \
  -d 'relabel_config=- target_label: cluster
  replacement: dev' \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/metric-relabel-debug"

# Debug downsampling filters — test which downsampling rules match a metric
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  -d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}' \
  -d 'downsampling_period=30d:5m,180d:1h' \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/downsampling-filters-debug"

# Debug retention filters — test which retention policy applies to a metric
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  -d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}' \
  -d 'retention_period=2y,{env="dev"}:30d' \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/retention-filters-debug"

These return HTML by default. For programmatic use, the VMUI at ${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/vmui/#/relabeling provides an interactive interface.

Timestamp Format

All times accept RFC3339 (2026-03-07T09:00:00Z) or Unix seconds (1709769600). Default time for instant queries is "now". Default end for range queries is "now".

Response Parsing (jq)

# Extract metric values from instant query
... | jq '.data.result[] | {metric: .metric.__name__, value: .value[1]}'

# Extract time series from range query
... | jq '.data.result[] | {metric: .metric, values: [.values[] | {time: .[0], value: .[1]}]}'

# List metric names from series response
... | jq '[.data[] | .__name__] | unique'

# Count alerts by state
... | jq '.data.alerts | group_by(.state) | map({state: .[0].state, count: length})'

# Top series by cardinality from tsdb status
... | jq '.data.seriesCountByMetricName[:10]'

Common Patterns

# Check if a metric exists
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=count({__name__=~\"http_request.*\"})" | jq '.data.result[].value[1]'

# Get all namespaces with active pods
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={__name__="kube_pod_info"}' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

# Rate of errors over last hour
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'query=sum(rate(http_requests_total{code=~"5.."}[5m])) by (namespace)' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query" | jq '.data.result[] | {ns: .metric.namespace, rate: .value[1]}'

Environment Switching

# Check current environment
echo "VM_METRICS_URL: $VM_METRICS_URL"
echo "VM_AUTH_HEADER: $( [ -n "$VM_AUTH_HEADER" ] && echo '(set)' || echo '(empty)' )"

Important Notes

POST endpoints accept application/x-www-form-urlencoded (use --data-urlencode for query params with special chars)
match[] parameter requires the [] suffix — match alone won't work
For metric metadata, raw API uses metric param
label_values uses a path parameter: /api/v1/label/{label_name}/values
expand-with-exprs, prettify-query, flags, metric-relabel-debug, downsampling-filters-debug, and retention-filters-debug are root-level paths, not under /api/v1/
Export endpoint (/api/v1/export) returns JSON lines (one object per line), not standard API response JSON
Debug endpoints (metric-relabel-debug, etc.) return HTML by default — best used via VMUI for interactive debugging
For full endpoint details, parameters, and response formats, see references/api-reference.md

victoriametrics-query