Simplified PromQL

Getting started

Create your first chart using a PromQL query. Start by creating a dashboard in Dashboards → Create dashboard.

Create a new chart on your dashboard and use a query like the one below:

avg(rate(http_requests_total))

PromQL (Prometheus Query Language) is designed for querying time series data. In Betterstack, we've adapted a subset of PromQL to work with log data, allowing you to leverage some of your existing PromQL knowledge. Note that our implementation currently has some limitations:

1. The only supported function is rate().
2. Some of the more advanced queries may not be supported yet

Supported operations

Betterstack supports the following PromQL operations:

• Basic metric selection
• Label matching (e.g., {label="value"})
• Aggregation operators with by and without clauses
• The rate() function
• Mathematical operations between series with the same tags

Aggregation operators include:

• sum: Calculate the sum of elements in the vector
• avg: Calculate the average of elements in the vector
• min: Select the minimum element of the vector
• max: Select the maximum element of the vector
• count: Count the number of elements in the vector
• topk: Select the k largest elements of the vector
• bottomk: Select the k smallest elements of the vector

Examples

See the examples below for full queries using PromQL in Betterstack.

HTTP request rate by method

sum by (method) (rate(http_requests_total))

This query returns the rate of HTTP requests, grouped by HTTP method.

CPU usage rate by pod

rate(container_cpu_usage_seconds_total{container!=""}) without (id)

This query returns the per-second rate of CPU usage over the last 15 minutes for each pod, excluding the "id" label.

Average memory usage rate

avg by (instance) (rate(process_resident_memory_bytes))

This query calculates the average per-second rate of memory usage for each instance.

Top 5 most frequently accessed API endpoints

topk(5, sum by (endpoint) (rate(api_requests_total)))

This query returns the top 5 API endpoints with the highest per-second request rate.

Network I/O rate by interface

sum by (interface) (rate(network_transmit_bytes_total))

This query returns the per-second rate of network transmission (in bytes), grouped by network interface.

Need help?

Please let us know at hello@betterstack.com.
We're happy to help! 🙏