---
title: "CloudWatch | Grafana Labs"
description: "The AWS CloudWatch data source."
---

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

## CloudWatch: Native AWS monitoring

**What it’s for:** AWS resources including EC2, RDS, Lambda, S3, ECS, and 200+ other AWS services.

## Trade-offs

| Pros                         | Cons                            |
|------------------------------|---------------------------------|
| Native AWS integration       | Per-query costs                 |
| All AWS services covered     | AWS-only                        |
| No agents to deploy          | AWS auth configuration required |
| Automatic resource discovery | Rate limits                     |

## Best for

- AWS infrastructure monitoring
- Services only available via CloudWatch
- Quick visibility into AWS resources

> **Cost Tip**: Monitor your CloudWatch API costs. Frequent dashboard refreshes = more queries = higher bills.

## Documentation

View the full documentation. *Learning path coming soon!*

[CloudWatch data source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/aws-cloudwatch/)