---
title: "Introduction to gcx | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Overview of the gcx CLI gcx is a single CLI that allows you and your AI coding agent structured access to both Grafana (dashboards, folders, alert rules, data sources) and Grafana Cloud products such as Synthetic Monitoring, K6, Fleet Management, Incidents, or Adaptive Telemetry."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Overview of the `gcx` CLI

`gcx` is a single CLI that allows you and your AI coding agent structured access to both Grafana (dashboards, folders, alert rules, data sources) and Grafana Cloud products such as Synthetic Monitoring, K6, Fleet Management, Incidents, or Adaptive Telemetry.

`gcx` ships with a suite of agent skills for common workflows like alert investigation, root-cause analysis, dashboard creation and GitOps, SLO management, and observability setup. It natively supports agentic workflows and it’s integrated with Grafana Assistant, combining the previously fragmented user experience into one single tool.

`gcx` is under continuous development. [Contact Grafana](/help/) for support or to report any issues you encounter and help us improve this feature.

## Benefits of `gcx`

Among others, `gcx` provides the following benefits:

- **Manage Grafana OSS/Enterprise and Grafana Cloud:** Use a single tool for dashboards, alerting, SLOs, on-call, synthetic checks, load testing, and more.
- **GitOps**: Pull resources to files, version in Git, or push back with full round-trip fidelity.
- **SRE**: Ensure system performance by monitoring telemetry and root-causing incidents.
- **Observability as code:** `gcx` can scaffold Go projects, import existing dashboards, lint with Rego rules, or live-reload development servers.
- **Automation:** `gcx` uses JSON/YAML output, structured errors, and predictable exit codes.
- **Multi-environment:** Use named contexts to switch between development, staging, and production environments.
- **AI agent friendly:** Agent mode auto-detected for Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, and other.

## Costs

> Note
> 
> `gcx` itself is free, but **some commands operate Grafana Cloud products that are billed based on usage**.

For example:

- Grafana Assistant is charged per token consumed, including requests made through `gcx`.
- Synthetic Monitoring is billed per test execution.
- Performance Testing (k6) is charged per Virtual User Hour.
- IRM is billed per monthly active user.

For details, refer to the [Cost Management and Billing documentation](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/) and [Grafana Cloud pricing](/pricing/).

## Compatibility

The following applies:

- `gcx` is available for Grafana Cloud and Grafana OSS/Enterprise v12 or later. Older Grafana versions are not supported.
- `gcx` is compatible with any agentic coding tool.
- `gcx` works across a wide range of Grafana product offerings. Feature availability depends on your Grafana deployment. For more information, refer to the [Compatibility matrix](https://github.com/grafana/gcx#compatibility).

## Migrate from `grafanactl`

If you want to migrate from `grafanctl` to `gcx`, search-and-replace `grafanactl` with `gcx`. For `grafanactl resources serve`, use `gcx dev serve` instead.

## Learn more

Refer to the [`gcx` repository](https://github.com/grafana/gcx) in GitHub for more information on:

- Installation and configuration
- How to manage resources, including dashboards-as-code
- CLI command reference