---
title: "Send data overview | Grafana Labs"
description: "Send metrics and logs from your existing collectors to Grafana Cloud"
---

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

## Already have collectors?

Send your data to Grafana Cloud for storage, visualization, and monitoring.

[Send data flow showing existing collectors sending data through various protocols to Grafana Cloud's Mimir and Loki storage](/docs/learning-hub/intro-to-grafana-cloud/images/send-telemetry-flow.svg "Send data flow showing existing collectors sending data through various protocols to Grafana Cloud's Mimir and Loki storage")

## Supported methods

| Method                                                                                | Protocol                     | Best for                         |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------|----------------------------------|
| [Prometheus remote\_write](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/metrics/metrics-prometheus/) | Push metrics to Mimir        | Teams already using Prometheus   |
| [InfluxDB](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/metrics/metrics-influxdb/)                   | InfluxDB line protocol       | Teams using InfluxDB collectors  |
| [Graphite](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/metrics/metrics-graphite/)                   | Graphite protocol            | Teams using Graphite/StatsD      |
| [OpenTelemetry](/docs/grafana-cloud/send-data/otlp/)                                  | OTLP (metrics, logs, traces) | Teams using OTel instrumentation |

## Questions answered

| With Send Data, you can answer…                                   |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
| What’s the p99 latency of my custom API endpoints?                |
| How many orders/transactions/events are processed per minute?     |
| What errors are occurring in my batch jobs or background workers? |
| How do my custom application metrics trend over time?             |

## Problems solved

| Problem                                            | How Send Data helps                                             |
|----------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| Already have Prometheus running                    | Use remote\_write to send to Grafana Cloud.                     |
| Need long-term storage for metrics                 | 13-month retention in Grafana Cloud                             |
| Using InfluxDB or Graphite                         | Native protocol support                                         |
| Want centralized observability with existing tools | Keep your collectors, gain powerful visualization and alerting. |

> **Keep your existing setup.** If you’ve already invested in collection infrastructure, you don’t have to change it. Send your data to Grafana Cloud for powerful querying, visualization, and alerting capabilities.

> **Don’t have collectors yet?** If you don’t have existing collectors, consider [Grafana Alloy](/docs/alloy/), Grafana’s distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector with native support for Prometheus, Loki, and OTel pipelines.