---
title: "GCP metrics: Grafana Alloy | Grafana Labs"
description: "Collect GCP Cloud Monitoring metrics using Grafana Alloy."
---

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

## How it works

> **Note**: Unlike AWS and Azure, GCP requires deploying Grafana Alloy. There is no serverless “scrape job” option.

[GCP metrics Alloy architecture: Alloy pulls from Cloud Monitoring across projects, pushes to Grafana Cloud Metrics](cp-olly-viz-gcp-metrics-alloy-light.svg "GCP metrics Alloy architecture: Alloy pulls from Cloud Monitoring across projects, pushes to Grafana Cloud Metrics")

**Complexity:** Moderate | **Infrastructure:** GCE or GKE | **Latency:** Configurable

Alloy collects from Cloud Monitoring using its embedded Stackdriver exporter, then sends the metrics to Grafana Cloud. Its processing pipeline lets you filter, relabel, and aggregate metrics before they’re stored.

## Authentication options

| Authentication                 | Description                                           |
|--------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------|
| **Service account (JSON key)** | Simple setup; requires rotating the key               |
| **Workload identity**          | Uses the identity of the pod or VM; no keys to manage |

## Considerations

- Multiple projects from one Alloy deployment
- Workload identity support, so no keys to manage
- Full processing pipeline for filtering, relabeling, and aggregation
- Metrics in Prometheus format for PromQL
- Alloy infrastructure to deploy, maintain, and update

## Documentation

View the [GCP metrics](/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-infrastructure/monitor-cloud-provider/gcp/config-gcp-metrics/) documentation.