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  1. Welcome to Telemetry 👋
  2. Quick start guide
  3. Wide events vs. metrics
  4. Ingesting data
    1. Better Stack collector
    2. OpenTelemetry
    3. Vector
    4. Ingesting via HTTP API
    5. Ingesting metrics
    6. Ingesting logs
    7. Migrating to Better Stack
  5. Using the product
    1. AI SRE ↗
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    3. Transforming ingested data
    4. Querying data
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  6. Telemetry API
    1. Getting an API token
    2. Sources & collectors
      1. Sources API
      2. Collectors API
      3. Collector metrics targets API
        1. List collector metrics targets GET
        2. Get a single collector metrics target GET
        3. Create a collector metric target POST
        4. Update a collector metrics target PATCH
        5. Remove a collector metric target DELETE
      4. Metrics API
      5. Source groups API
    3. Dashboards
    4. Explorations
    5. Alerts API
    6. Connections API
    7. Query API ↗
  7. Alternative to
    1. Lightstep

Update a collector metrics target

Updates an existing collector target. Only include the fields you want to change - omitted fields are preserved.

The kind field cannot be changed after creation. To switch to a different kind, remove the target and create a new one.

Changing any connection field resets the target's status to pending so the collector can re-verify the connection. Connection fields are host, port, username, password, ssl_mode, tls, scheme, listen_ip, endpoint, api_key.

PATCH https://telemetry.betterstack.com/api/v1/collectors/{collector_id}/targets/{target_id}

Headers

Authorization
required string

Bearer $TOKEN

Body parameters

host
string

The hostname or IP address of the target.

port
integer

The port number.

service
string

The service or container name.

listen_ip
string

The IP address the process listens on. Only for nginx, apache, kafka.

endpoint
string

The full scrape URL. Only for prometheus.

username
string

The username for authentication.

password
string

The password for authentication. Write-only - never returned in responses.

api_key
string

An API key for authentication. Write-only - never returned in responses. Only for elasticsearch.

ssl_mode
string

The SSL mode for the connection. Valid options are disable, require, and verify-ca. Only for postgres.

tls
string

The TLS mode for the connection. Valid options are false, true, skip-verify, and preferred. Only for mysql.

scheme
string

The connection scheme. Valid options are http and https. Only for elasticsearch.

enabled
boolean

Set to false to disable the target, or true to re-enable it.

200

The target was updated successfully.

Response body

{
  "data": {
    "id": "1",
    "type": "collector_target",
    "attributes": {
      "kind": "postgres",
      "host": "new-db.example.com",
      "port": 5432,
      "service": null,
      "username": "monitor",
      "ssl_mode": "require",
      "status": "pending",
      "enabled": true,
      "container": null,
      "created_at": "2025-06-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "updated_at": "2025-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"
    }
  }
}
422

Validation failed due to invalid parameters.

Response body

{
  "errors": [
    "Ssl mode can't be blank"
  ],
  "invalid_attributes": [
    "ssl_mode"
  ]
}
404

The target was not found, or belongs to a different collector or team.

Response body

{
  "errors": "Not found"
}

Examples

Change host Rotate credentials Disable 
curl -X PATCH "https://telemetry.betterstack.com/api/v1/collectors/1/targets/1" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "host": "new-db.example.com"
     }'
curl -X PATCH "https://telemetry.betterstack.com/api/v1/collectors/1/targets/1" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "username": "new-monitor",
       "password": "new-secret"
     }'
curl -X PATCH "https://telemetry.betterstack.com/api/v1/collectors/1/targets/1" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "enabled": false
     }'


Previous article

Create a collector metric target

Next article

Remove a collector metric target