---
title: "Prometheus | Grafana Labs"
description: "The Prometheus data source for metrics."
---

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

## Prometheus: The cloud-native metrics standard

**What it’s for:** Time-series metrics including CPU, memory, request rates, error counts, and latency.

## Trade-offs

| Pros                        | Cons                                   |
|-----------------------------|----------------------------------------|
| Industry standard for K8s   | PromQL learning curve                  |
| Huge ecosystem of exporters | Local storage limitations              |
| Pull-based (secure)         | Single-node scalability                |
| Native Grafana integration  | Requires Prometheus-compatible backend |

## Best for

- Kubernetes environments
- Microservices architectures
- Cloud-native applications

## Learning path

Connect your Prometheus data source step by step.

[Prometheus data source](/docs/learning-hub/intro-to-data-sources/02-choose-your-path/18-prometheus-journey/)