---
title: "Discourse integration | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn about Discourse Grafana Cloud integration."
---

# Discourse integration for Grafana Cloud

Discourse is an application that is used to host a discussion platform. The Discourse integration uses Grafana Alloy to collect metrics from a Discourse instance like HTTP traffic, request rates, latency, sidekiq jobs, and browser heap usage.

This integration supports Discourse 2.8+

This integration includes 2 useful alerts and 2 pre-built dashboards to help monitor and visualize Discourse metrics.

## Before you begin

This integration monitors a Discourse instance that is exposing Prometheus metrics via the [official exporter plugin](https://github.com/discourse/discourse-prometheus). Refer to the following official Discourse documentation for instructions on [how to install plugins in Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/install-plugins-in-discourse/19157).

In order for the plugin to work, add the plugin’s repository URL to the `app.yml` file, which is usually present in `/var/discourse/containers`.

YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```yaml
hooks:
  after_code:
    - exec:
        cd: $home/plugins
        cmd:
          - sudo -E -u discourse git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-prometheus.git
```

Then rebuild the container:

sh ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```sh
cd /var/discourse
./launcher rebuild app
```

For more information on how to first install Discourse, please refer to their [installation documentation](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md).

The configuration of `DISCOURSE_PROMETHEUS_TRUSTED_IP_ALLOWLIST_REGEX` may also need to be configured for Grafana Alloy to be trusted to [scrape the metrics](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-prometheus/72666).

## Install Discourse integration for Grafana Cloud

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click **Connections** in the left-hand menu.
2. Find **Discourse** and click its tile to open the integration.
3. Review the prerequisites in the **Configuration Details** tab and set up Grafana Alloy to send Discourse metrics to your Grafana Cloud instance.
4. Click **Install** to add this integration’s pre-built dashboards and alerts to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Discourse setup.

## Configuration snippets for Grafana Alloy

### Simple mode

These snippets are configured to scrape a single Discourse instance running locally with default ports.

First, **manually** copy and append the following snippets into your alloy configuration file.

### Metrics snippets

Alloy ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```alloy
discovery.relabel "metrics_integrations_integrations_discourse" {
	targets = [{
		__address__ = "localhost:80",
	}]

	rule {
		target_label = "instance"
		replacement  = constants.hostname
	}
}

prometheus.scrape "metrics_integrations_integrations_discourse" {
	targets    = discovery.relabel.metrics_integrations_integrations_discourse.output
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/discourse"
}
```

### Advanced mode

The following snippets provide examples to guide you through the configuration process.

To instruct Grafana Alloy to scrape your Discourse instances, **manually** copy and append the snippets to your alloy configuration file, then follow subsequent instructions.

### Advanced metrics snippets

Alloy ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```alloy
discovery.relabel "metrics_integrations_integrations_discourse" {
	targets = [{
		__address__ = "localhost:80",
	}]

	rule {
		target_label = "instance"
		replacement  = constants.hostname
	}
}

prometheus.scrape "metrics_integrations_integrations_discourse" {
	targets    = discovery.relabel.metrics_integrations_integrations_discourse.output
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/discourse"
}
```

To monitor your Discourse instance, you must use a [discovery.relabel](/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/discovery.relabel/) component to discover your Discourse Prometheus endpoint and apply appropriate labels, followed by a [prometheus.scrape](/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/prometheus.scrape) component to scrape it.

Configure the following properties within each `discovery.relabel` component:

- `__address__`: The address to your Discourse Prometheus metrics endpoint.
- `instance` label: `constants.hostname` sets the `instance` label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Discourse instance.

If you have multiple Discourse servers to scrape, configure one `discovery.relabel` for each and scrape them by including each under `targets` within the `prometheus.scrape` component.

## Dashboards

The Discourse integration installs the following dashboards in your Grafana Cloud instance to help monitor your system.

- Discourse Jobs Processing
- Discourse Overview

**Discourse Jobs Dashboard**

**Discourse Overview Dashboard 1**

**Discourse Overview Dashboard 2**

## Alerts

The Discourse integration includes the following useful alerts:

Expand table

| Alert                          | Description                                              |
|--------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------|
| DiscourseRequestsHigh5xxErrors | Critical: More than 10% of all requests result in a 5XX. |
| DiscourseRequestsHigh4xxErrors | Warning: More than 30% of all requests result in a 4XX.  |

## Metrics

The most important metrics provided by the Discourse integration, which are used on the pre-built dashboards and Prometheus alerts, are as follows:

- discourse\_active\_app\_reqs
- discourse\_http\_duration\_seconds
- discourse\_http\_requests
- discourse\_page\_views
- discourse\_queued\_app\_reqs
- discourse\_rss
- discourse\_scheduled\_job\_count
- discourse\_scheduled\_job\_duration\_seconds
- discourse\_sidekiq\_job\_count
- discourse\_sidekiq\_job\_duration\_seconds
- discourse\_sidekiq\_jobs\_enqueued
- discourse\_v8\_used\_heap\_size
- up

## Changelog

md ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```md
# 1.0.0 - December 2025

* Chore: Fix incorrect semver to 1.0.0. No further changes

# 0.0.2 - September 2023

* New Filter Metrics option for configuring the Grafana Agent, which saves on metrics cost by dropping any metric not used by this integration. Beware that anything custom built using metrics that are not on the snippet will stop working.
* New hostname relabel option, which applies the instance name you write on the text box to the Grafana Agent configuration snippets, making it easier and less error prone to configure this mandatory label.

# 0.0.1 - December 2022

Initial Release
```

## Cost

By connecting your Discourse instance to Grafana Cloud, you might incur charges. To view information on the number of active series that your Grafana Cloud account uses for metrics included in each Cloud tier, see [Active series and dpm usage](/docs/grafana-cloud/fundamentals/active-series-and-dpm/) and [Cloud tier pricing](/products/cloud/pricing/).
