Explore documentation
  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 ↗
    2. MCP server ↗
    3. Transforming ingested data
    4. Querying data
    5. Tracing
    6. Grafana
    7. Alerts
  6. Telemetry API
    1. Getting an API token
    2. Sources & collectors
      1. Sources API
      2. Collectors API
        1. List all collectors GET
        2. Get a single collector GET
        3. Create a collector POST
        4. Update a collector PATCH
        5. Remove a collector DELETE
        6. List hosts where a collector is running GET
        7. Lists databases monitored by a collector GET
        8. List collector metrics targets GET
        9. Get a single collector metrics target GET
        10. Create a collector metric target POST
        11. Update a collector metrics target PATCH
        12. Remove a collector metric target DELETE
      3. Metrics API
      4. 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 (host, port, username, password, ssl_mode, tls, scheme, listen_ip, endpoint, api_key) resets the target's status to pending so the collector can re-verify the connection.

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 (process kinds only).

listen_ip
string

The IP address the process listens on (nginx, apache, kafka only).

endpoint
string

The full scrape URL (prometheus only).

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 (elasticsearch only). Write-only — never returned in responses.

ssl_mode
string

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

tls
string

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

scheme
string

The connection scheme (elasticsearch only). Valid options are http and https.

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,
      "listen_ip": null,
      "endpoint": null,
      "scheme": null,
      "username": "monitor",
      "ssl_mode": "require",
      "tls": null,
      "status": "pending",
      "enabled": true,
      "container": null,
      "detected_host": null,
      "autogenerated": false,
      "paused_until": null,
      "consecutive_failure_count": 0,
      "last_ping_at": "2025-06-15T14:32:00.000Z",
      "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"
}

Example: Change host

cURL
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"
     }'


Example: Rotate credentials

cURL
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"
     }'


Example: Disable a target

cURL
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