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Learn what the Amazon CloudWatch data source gives you in Grafana and when to query CloudWatch directly.

Estimated time: 2 min

Why query CloudWatch from Grafana

Amazon CloudWatch is the AWS native monitoring service. It collects, aggregates, and stores metrics, logs, and events from AWS resources such as EC2 instances, Lambda functions, RDS databases, and load balancers.

The CloudWatch data source in Grafana lets you query that data directly. Your data stays in AWS while Grafana provides the visualization, exploration, and alerting layer on top.

What you get

  • Metrics — Query CloudWatch metrics with metric math, search expressions, and wildcards.
  • Logs — Run CloudWatch Logs Insights queries and view results alongside your metrics.
  • Alerting and annotations — Build Grafana alert rules and annotations on CloudWatch data.
  • Curated dashboards — Import pre-built dashboards for Amazon EC2, EBS, Lambda, RDS, and CloudWatch Logs.
  • A unified view — Correlate CloudWatch data with Prometheus, Loki, and other sources in a single dashboard.

CloudWatch traces aren’t supported by this data source. For AWS X-Ray traces, use the AWS Application Signals data source.

A note on cost

The CloudWatch data source uses the ListMetrics and GetMetricData AWS API calls. GetMetricData requests don’t qualify for the CloudWatch API free tier, and CloudWatch Logs pricing is based on the data ingested, archived, and analyzed by Logs Insights queries. Keep query frequency and dashboard refresh intervals in mind. For details, refer to the CloudWatch pricing page.

In the next milestone, you’ll prepare the AWS IAM permissions Grafana needs before you add the data source.