---
title: "Monitor components | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn how to monitor component metrics"
---

# Monitor components

Alloy [components](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/alloy/get-started/components) may optionally expose Prometheus metrics which can be used to investigate the behavior of that component. These component-specific metrics are only generated when an instance of that component is running.

> Component-specific metrics are different than any metrics processed by the component. Component-specific metrics are used to expose the state of a component for observability, alerting, and debugging.

Component-specific metrics are exposed at the `/metrics` HTTP endpoint of the Alloy HTTP server, which defaults to listening on `http://localhost:12345`.

> The documentation for the [`alloy run`](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/alloy/reference/cli/run) command describes how to modify the address Alloy listens on for HTTP traffic.

Component-specific metrics have a `component_id` label matching the component ID generating those metrics. For example, component-specific metrics for a `prometheus.remote_write` component labeled `production` has a `component_id` label with the value `prometheus.remote_write.production`.

The [reference documentation](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/alloy/reference/components) for each component described the list of component-specific metrics that the component exposes. Not all components expose metrics.