Understanding Prometheus Metric Types: A Guide for Beginners

Prometheus is a tool that helps you track how your systems are working. Think of it as a tool that collects numbers about your applications and servers. This guide will help you understand the different types of metrics and how to use them.

The Four Basic Types of Prometheus Metrics

1. Counters - Numbers That Only Go Up

A counter is a number that only goes up or resets to zero on restart, just like a car's odometer that keeps adding miles. It's perfect for tracking things that only increase, like total API requests, error counts, or tasks completed. When a counter resets to zero (like during a system restart), Prometheus can detect this reset and handle calculations correctly. Counters are the simplest metric type and should be used whenever you're counting the total occurrences of something.