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Grafana Cloud
Last reviewed: October 29, 2025

Boost services

Boosting temporarily increases the profiling sample rate for a specific service to 100% for a limited time. Use boosts to capture more detailed data exactly when it matters, for example during an incident, after a deployment, or while you’re investigating performance.

When the boost expires, the service automatically returns to its default profiling sample rate.

Adaptive Profiles also boosts services automatically for 5 minutes when it detects a new version of a service. You can start a manual boost from the Boosted services section of the Adaptive Profiles Overview page, or directly from Drilldown when you’re investigating a specific service.

How it works

  • Scope: The boost applies to a single service.

  • Duration: When you start a manual boost, you choose a time window in hours and minutes, for example 30m, 2h, or 1h15m. The service returns to its default profiling sample rate when the time expires.

  • Sampling effect: During the boost, Adaptive Profiles collects every profile event from the selected service.

  • Cost: Because sampling increases, boosts may temporarily raise usage and cost.

  • One boost per service: A service can only have one active boost at a time. If a boost is already running for a service, you must wait for it to expire before starting a new one.

Boost a service from the Overview page

To boost a service from the Adaptive Profiles Overview page, complete the following steps.

  1. Navigate to Adaptive Profiles > Overview.

  2. Scroll to the Boosted services section.

  3. Click + Boost service.

  4. Enter the following.

    • Service name: choose the service to boost.
    • Duration: enter a time window, for example 30m, 1h, or 2h30m.

  5. Click Start.

    The service appears in the boosted services table with its profiling sample rate and the time the boost ends.

    When the boost expires, the service automatically returns to its default profiling sample rate.

Boost a service from Drilldown

When you’re investigating a specific service in Drilldown, you can boost that service directly without returning to Adaptive Profiles.

  1. Open the service in Drilldown.
  2. Click Boost service.
  3. Enter a duration, for example 30m, 1h, or 2h30m.
  4. Click Increase.

The boost runs for the duration you set, then the service returns to its default profiling sample rate.

The Boost service option doesn’t appear when Adaptive Profiles is disabled. It’s also unavailable when the service already has an active boost or when the Drilldown data source isn’t the one configured for Adaptive Profiles.

View active boosts

Active boosts appear in the Boosted services table on the Adaptive Profiles Overview page. The table includes:

  • Service name: the service being boosted. Click the service name to open it in Drilldown.
  • Profiling sample rate: the boosted sample rate, for example 100%.
  • Status: when the boost ends, with the exact end time in UTC.
  • Trigger: how the boost started.
    • Manually boosted means someone started the boost from the UI. The source path shown below the label tells you where the boost was started, for example from the Adaptive Profiles Overview page or from a Pyroscope Drilldown.
    • Version change means Adaptive Profiles detected a new version of the service and boosted it automatically.

Use the Filter by service dropdown to narrow the table to a single service.

When no boosts are active, the table is empty and shows a prompt to use + Boost service to start one.