--- title: "Anonymous usage statistics | Grafana Cloud documentation" description: "Information about the opt-out anonymous usage statistics events emitted by the Grafana MCP server." --- > For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt). # Anonymous usage statistics The Grafana MCP server can report limited usage statistics about itself to Grafana Labs. Grafana Labs uses this data to improve tools and investigate failures. To preserve anonymity, the emitted data describes the *shape* of usage only. Things like tool arguments, resource names, dashboards, queries, log lines, error messages and credentials are never sent, and neither is the Grafana instance’s URL, hostname, stack slug, organisation name or organisation ID. Nothing an MCP client reports about itself - things like name and version - is collected. Any other value that comes from outside the binary is reduced to a fixed vocabulary before being emitted, so we don’t emit a potentially-identifying value. > Note > > Usage statistics reporting is **disabled by default**. To disable reporting explicitly, refer to [Opt out](#opt-out). ## Before you begin - Install the Grafana MCP server. Refer to [Set up the Grafana MCP server](/docs/grafana-cloud/ai-tools/mcp-servers/oss-mcp/set-up). - Make sure you can change the server’s startup flags or environment variables. If you start the server from an MCP client, refer to [Client configuration examples](/docs/grafana-cloud/ai-tools/mcp-servers/oss-mcp/set-up/client-configuration-examples). ## Understand which data is collected Each server process generates one identifier, `process_id`, as a random UUID in memory when it starts. Every event carries the following data: Expand table | Field | Description | Example | |---------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------| | `service` | Always `mcp-grafana`. | `mcp-grafana` | | `version` | The version of the `mcp-grafana` binary. | `1.4.2` | | `os` | Operating system. | `linux`, `darwin`, `windows` | | `arch` | CPU architecture. | `amd64`, `arm64` | | `process_id` | A random per-process UID. | UUID | | `report_reason` | Why this event was sent: `interval` (once every 4h) or `shutdown`. | `interval` | | `process_uptime_ms` | How long the process had been running when the event was built, in milliseconds. | `1234` | | `report_seq` | This process’s reports numbered from 1. A gap in the sequence for a `process_id` is a report that was built and never arrived. | `3` | | `tools_called` | Comma-separated names of the tools called since the previous event. | `list_datasources,query_prometheus` | | `tool_calls` | A nested object keyed by tool name, each holding `calls` and `errors`. | `{"query_prometheus":{"calls":4,"errors":1}}` | | `grafana_version` | The version the Grafana instance reported. This is read from a response the server had already fetched for its own reasons, and truncated to 64 bytes. Absent whenever that version is not already known. | `12.1.0` | | `target_kind` | `cloud` for Grafana Cloud or `self_hosted` for other hostnames. Grafana Cloud instances reached through custom domains report `self_hosted`. | `cloud` | | `auth_method` | The credential category the connection resolved, from a fixed vocabulary. | `service_account_token` | | `transport` | The transport the server is running: `stdio`, `sse` or `streamable-http`. | `stdio` | | `flags` | The **names** of the command-line flags that were set. No flag values are sent. | `disable-write,transport` | | `env_set` | The **names** of the configuration environment variables that are set. No free-form values are sent. | `GRAFANA_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN,GRAFANA_URL` | | `enabled_tools` | The tool category names that are active. | `alerting,dashboard,search` | | `disabled_tools` | The tool category names a `--disable-` flag turned off. | `oncall` | | `tls_enabled` | Whether the server is serving HTTPS (only the `streamable-http` transport does). | `false` | | `metrics_enabled` | Whether the Prometheus `/metrics` endpoint is served. | `true` | | `dynamic_multi_org` | Whether per-call organisation selection is enabled. | `false` | | `proxied_enabled` | Whether proxied tools from external MCP servers are enabled. | `true` | ## Server-side enrichment Reports are received by Grafana’s usage-stats service, the same service that receives usage reports from Grafana, Loki, Mimir and Tempo. On receipt, the service adds two pieces of information derived from the connection rather than from the event: - A coarse **geographic region**, for example, a country or subdivision, taken from headers added by the CDN edge. - The **network organisation name** from a whois lookup of the connecting IP address, which typically resolves to your ISP, your cloud provider or your employer’s network. ## Inspect what would be sent To inspect the report, set either the `--usage-stats=log` flag or the `GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS=log` environment variable. In this mode, the server prints each event to stderr and doesn’t send it: shell ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```shell GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS=log mcp-grafana ``` The server prints a report every four hours and on graceful shutdown. To inspect a report sooner, stop the server gracefully after you run the tool calls you want to inspect. If you run the server in a terminal, press **Ctrl+C**. Under the `stdio` transport, stderr goes wherever your MCP client sends the server’s logs. Read the printed events there. ## How the report is sent Expand table | Property | Value | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Destination | `https://stats.grafana.org/mcp-grafana-usage-report` | | Method | A single `POST` with the event as a JSON object | | Attempts | One. A failed report is never retried and never stored. | | Timing | Every four hours, and once more as the process exits | | Time limit | One second for the shutdown report, so exit is never delayed longer than that | Because a failed report is never retried, and the counters reset when a report is built rather than when it arrives, a total summed across a `process_id` is a floor rather than an exact count. `report_seq` is how a missing report is identified. To send reports somewhere else, set `GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS_ENDPOINT` to another URL. This changes the destination only; it is not an opt-out. ## Opt out Use one of the following controls. The `--usage-stats` flag overrides `GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS`, and both override `DO_NOT_TRACK`. Unrecognized mode values disable reporting. Only `DO_NOT_TRACK=1` has an effect; other values don’t change the reporting mode. The controls appear in order of precedence, highest first: 1. **`--usage-stats` flag**: set it to `enabled`, `disabled` or `log`. shell ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```shell mcp-grafana --usage-stats=disabled ``` 2. **`GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS` environment variable**: set it to `enabled`, `disabled` or `log`. shell ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```shell export GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS=disabled ``` 3. **`DO_NOT_TRACK` environment variable**: set it to `1` to disable reporting, following the cross-tool [DO\_NOT\_TRACK](https://donottrack.sh/) convention. shell ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```shell export DO_NOT_TRACK=1 ``` ## Next steps - To configure other server options, refer to [Command-line flags](/docs/grafana-cloud/ai-tools/mcp-servers/oss-mcp/configure/command-line-flags). - To monitor your server, refer to [Observability: metrics and tracing](/docs/grafana-cloud/ai-tools/mcp-servers/oss-mcp/developer/observability-metrics-and-tracing).