Explore documentation
  1. Welcome to Telemetry 👋
  2. Quick start guide
  3. Wide events vs. metrics
  4. Ingesting data
    1. Better Stack collector
    2. Vector
    3. OpenTelemetry
    4. Ingesting via HTTP API
    5. Ingesting metrics
    6. Ingesting logs
    7. Migrating to Better Stack
  5. Using the product
    1. AI SRE ↗
    2. MCP server ↗
    3. Transforming ingested data
    4. Querying data
    5. Tracing
    6. Alerts
  6. Telemetry API
    1. Getting an API token
    2. Sources API
    3. Source groups API
    4. Metrics API
    5. Dashboards API
    6. Explorations API
      1. List all explorations GET
      2. Get a single exploration GET
      3. Create an exploration POST
      4. Update an exploration PATCH
      5. Remove an exploration DELETE
    7. Exploration groups API
    8. Alerts API
    9. Connections API
    10. Collectors API
    11. Query API ↗
  7. Alternative to
    1. Lightstep

Get a single exploration

Retrieves a single exploration by its ID, including the full chart, query, and variable configurations.

The Explorations API is only available for the Telemetry product and can only be accessed via the telemetry.betterstack.com hostname.

GET https://telemetry.betterstack.com/api/v2/explorations/{id}

URL parameters

id
required integer

The unique identifier of the exploration.

Headers

Authorization
required string

Bearer $TOKEN

200

The details of the specified exploration.

Response body

{
  "data": {
    "id": 123,
    "type": "exploration",
    "attributes": {
      "name": "Error Rate Analysis",
      "date_range_from": "now-3h",
      "date_range_to": "now",
      "exploration_group_id": 456,
      "created_at": "2026-02-20T10:00:00Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-02-23T14:30:00Z",
      "chart": {
        "chart_type": "line_chart",
        "name": "Error Rate by Service",
        "description": "Shows error rates across all services",
        "settings": {
          "unit": "number",
          "decimal_places": 2,
          "legend": "bottom",
          "stacking": "dont_stack",
          "x_axis_type": "time"
        }
      },
      "queries": [
        {
          "id": 1,
          "name": "Main Query",
          "query_type": "sql_expression",
          "sql_query": "SELECT {{time}} AS time, count(*) AS value FROM {{source}} WHERE time BETWEEN {{start_time}} AND {{end_time}} GROUP BY time",
          "source_variable": "source"
        }
      ],
      "variables": [
        {
          "name": "source",
          "variable_type": "source",
          "default_values": [
            "123"
          ]
        },
        {
          "name": "log_level",
          "variable_type": "select_value",
          "values": [
            "error",
            "warning",
            "info"
          ],
          "default_values": [
            "error"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}
401

Invalid or missing authentication token.

404

An exploration with the specified ID was not found.

Response body

{
  "errors": "Resource with provided ID was not found"
}

Example Request

cURL
curl --request GET \
     --url "https://telemetry.betterstack.com/api/v2/explorations/123" \
     --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"


Previous article

List all explorations

Next article

Create an exploration