VictoriaMetrics Metrics Query

Query VictoriaMetrics HTTP API directly via curl. Covers instant/range queries, label/series discovery, alerts, rules, instance diagnostics, raw data export, metric usage statistics, and config debugging tools.

Environment

bash

# $VM_METRICS_URL - base URL
#   cluster: export VM_METRICS_URL="https://vmselect.example.com/select/0/prometheus"
#   single: export VM_METRICS_URL="http://localhost:8428"
# $VM_AUTH_HEADER - auth header (set for prod, empty for local)

Auth Pattern

All curl commands use conditional auth — works for both prod and local:

bash

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up" | jq .

When

VM_AUTH_HEADER

is empty,

-H

flag is omitted automatically.

Core Endpoints

Instant Query

bash

# Query at current time
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up" | jq .

# Query at specific time
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=up&time=2026-03-07T09:00:00Z" | jq .

Parameters:

query

(required),

time

(optional, RFC3339 or Unix seconds),

step

timeout

Range Query

bash

curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query_range?query=rate(http_requests_total[5m])&start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z&end=2026-03-07T12:00:00Z&step=5m" | jq .

Parameters:

query

(required),

start

(required),

end

(optional),

step

(required). Times in RFC3339 or Unix seconds.

Labels Discovery

bash

# All label names
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/labels" | jq '.data[]'

# Label values (label_name is a PATH parameter)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

# Label values filtered by series matcher
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={job="kubelet"}' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

Series Discovery

bash

# Find series matching selector
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={namespace="myapp"}' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/series?limit=20" | jq '.data[].__name__'

Parameters:

match[]

(required),

start

end

limit

Metric Metadata

bash

# Search by metric name keyword
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/metadata?metric=http_request&limit=10" | jq .

Parameters:

metric

(search keyword),

limit

Alerts and Rules

bash

# All firing/pending alerts
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/alerts" | jq '.data.alerts[]'

# All alerting and recording rules
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/rules" | jq '.data.groups[]'

Instance Diagnostics

bash

# TSDB cardinality stats
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/tsdb" | jq .

# Currently executing queries
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/active_queries" | jq .

# Most frequent/slowest queries
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/top_queries?topN=10" | jq .

# Version info
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/buildinfo" | jq .

Export Raw Data

bash

# Export raw samples as JSON lines (one JSON object per line)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]=http_requests_total' \
  -d 'start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z' -d 'end=2026-03-07T12:00:00Z' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/export" | head -5

# Export with reduced memory usage (for large exports)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={namespace="myapp"}' \
  -d 'start=2026-03-07T00:00:00Z' -d 'end=2026-03-07T01:00:00Z' \
  -d 'reduce_mem_usage=1' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/export" > export.jsonl

Parameters:

match[]

(required),

start

end

reduce_mem_usage

. Output is JSON lines (not wrapped in a standard API response).

Each line:

{"metric":{"__name__":"...","label":"value"},"values":[...],"timestamps":[...]}

Also available:

/api/v1/export/csv

(CSV format),

/api/v1/export/native

(binary, for import via

/api/v1/import/native

Series Count

bash

# Total number of active time series
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/series/count" | jq .

Note: can be slow on large databases and may return slightly inflated values.

Metric Usage Statistics

bash

# Which metrics are being queried, and how often
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?limit=20" | jq .

# Metrics queried <= N times (find unused/rarely-used metrics)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?limit=50&le=1" | jq .

# Filter by metric name pattern
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/status/metric_names_stats?match_pattern=vm_&limit=20" | jq .

Parameters:

limit

(max results),

le

(max query count threshold — find metrics queried at most N times),

match_pattern

(metric name prefix filter).

Flags (Non-Default)

bash

# View non-default runtime flags (returns plain text, one flag per line — NOT JSON)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/flags"

Root-level endpoint. Returns plain text (not JSON), one flag per line. Shows only flags that differ from defaults — useful for debugging configuration.

Query Tools

These are ROOT-level endpoints, NOT under

/api/v1/

. On cluster mode, strip the

/select/0/prometheus

prefix to get the base host.

bash

# Expand WITH expressions (returns text, not JSON)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/expand-with-exprs?query=WITH(x=up)x"

# Prettify MetricsQL query (returns JSON)
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/prettify-query?query=rate(x[5m])" | jq .

Note:

${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}

strips everything from

/select

onward, yielding the base host. On single-node (local),

VM_METRICS_URL

has no

/select

prefix so it returns the URL unchanged.

Config Debug Tools

Root-level endpoints for debugging relabeling, downsampling, and retention configurations. These accept POST with form data. Primarily used via VMUI but accessible via curl.

bash

# Debug metric relabeling rules — test how a metric is transformed
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  -d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}' \
  -d 'relabel_config=- target_label: cluster
  replacement: dev' \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/metric-relabel-debug"

# Debug downsampling filters — test which downsampling rules match a metric
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  -d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}' \
  -d 'downsampling_period=30d:5m,180d:1h' \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/downsampling-filters-debug"

# Debug retention filters — test which retention policy applies to a metric
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  -d 'metric=foo{bar="baz"}' \
  -d 'retention_period=2y,{env="dev"}:30d' \
  "${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/retention-filters-debug"

These return HTML by default. For programmatic use, the VMUI at

${VM_METRICS_URL%%/select/*}/vmui/#/relabeling

provides an interactive interface.

Timestamp Format

All times accept RFC3339 (

2026-03-07T09:00:00Z

) or Unix seconds (

1709769600

). Default

time

for instant queries is "now". Default

end

for range queries is "now".

Response Parsing (jq)

bash

# Extract metric values from instant query
... | jq '.data.result[] | {metric: .metric.__name__, value: .value[1]}'

# Extract time series from range query
... | jq '.data.result[] | {metric: .metric, values: [.values[] | {time: .[0], value: .[1]}]}'

# List metric names from series response
... | jq '[.data[] | .__name__] | unique'

# Count alerts by state
... | jq '.data.alerts | group_by(.state) | map({state: .[0].state, count: length})'

# Top series by cardinality from tsdb status
... | jq '.data.seriesCountByMetricName[:10]'

Common Patterns

bash

# Check if a metric exists
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query?query=count({__name__=~\"http_request.*\"})" | jq '.data.result[].value[1]'

# Get all namespaces with active pods
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'match[]={__name__="kube_pod_info"}' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/label/namespace/values" | jq '.data[]'

# Rate of errors over last hour
curl -s ${VM_AUTH_HEADER:+-H "$VM_AUTH_HEADER"} \
  --data-urlencode 'query=sum(rate(http_requests_total{code=~"5.."}[5m])) by (namespace)' \
  "$VM_METRICS_URL/api/v1/query" | jq '.data.result[] | {ns: .metric.namespace, rate: .value[1]}'

Environment Switching

bash

# Check current environment
echo "VM_METRICS_URL: $VM_METRICS_URL"
echo "VM_AUTH_HEADER: $( [ -n "$VM_AUTH_HEADER" ] && echo '(set)' || echo '(empty)' )"

Important Notes

POST endpoints accept
```
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
```
(use
```
--data-urlencode
```
for query params with special chars)
```
match[]
```
parameter requires the
```
[]
```
suffix —
```
match
```
alone won't work
For metric metadata, raw API uses
```
metric
```
param

label_values

uses a path parameter:

/api/v1/label/{label_name}/values

expand-with-exprs

prettify-query

flags

metric-relabel-debug

downsampling-filters-debug

, and

retention-filters-debug

are root-level paths, not under

/api/v1/

Export endpoint (
```
/api/v1/export
```
) returns JSON lines (one object per line), not standard API response JSON
Debug endpoints (
```
metric-relabel-debug
```
, etc.) return HTML by default — best used via VMUI for interactive debugging
For full endpoint details, parameters, and response formats, see
```
references/api-reference.md
```

victoriametrics-query

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

VictoriaMetrics Metrics Query

Environment

Auth Pattern

Core Endpoints

Instant Query

Range Query

Labels Discovery

Series Discovery

Metric Metadata

Alerts and Rules

Instance Diagnostics

Export Raw Data

Series Count

Metric Usage Statistics

Flags (Non-Default)

Query Tools

Config Debug Tools

Timestamp Format

Response Parsing (jq)

Common Patterns

Environment Switching

Important Notes