---
description: Collecting Docker metrics with Prometheus
keywords: prometheus, metrics
title: Collect Docker metrics with Prometheus
aliases:
  - /engine/admin/prometheus/
  - /config/thirdparty/monitoring/
  - /config/thirdparty/prometheus/
  - /config/daemon/prometheus/
---

[Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/) is an open-source systems monitoring and
alerting toolkit. You can configure Docker as a Prometheus target.

> [!WARNING]
>
> The available metrics and the names of those metrics are in active
> development and may change at any time.

Currently, you can only monitor Docker itself. You can't currently monitor your
application using the Docker target.

## Example

The following example shows you how to configure your Docker daemon, set up
Prometheus to run as a container on your local machine, and monitor your Docker
instance using Prometheus.

### Configure the daemon

To configure the Docker daemon as a Prometheus target, you need to specify the
`metrics-address` in the `daemon.json` configuration file. This daemon expects
the file to be located at one of the following locations by default. If the
file doesn't exist, create it.

- **Linux**: `/etc/docker/daemon.json`
- **Windows Server**: `C:\ProgramData\docker\config\daemon.json`
- **Docker Desktop**: Open the Docker Desktop settings and select **Docker Engine** to edit the file.

Add the following configuration:

```json
{
  "metrics-addr": "127.0.0.1:9323"
}
```

Save the file, or in the case of Docker Desktop for Mac or Docker Desktop for
Windows, save the configuration. Restart Docker.

Docker now exposes Prometheus-compatible metrics on port 9323 via the loopback
interface. You can configure it to use the wildcard address `0.0.0.0` instead,
but this will expose the Prometheus port to the wider network. Consider your
threat model carefully when deciding which option best suits your environment.

### Create a Prometheus configuration

Copy the following configuration file and save it to a location of your choice,
for example `/tmp/prometheus.yml`. This is a stock Prometheus configuration file,
except for the addition of the Docker job definition at the bottom of the file.

```yml
# my global config
global:
  scrape_interval: 15s # Set the scrape interval to every 15 seconds. Default is every 1 minute.
  evaluation_interval: 15s # Evaluate rules every 15 seconds. The default is every 1 minute.
  # scrape_timeout is set to the global default (10s).

  # Attach these labels to any time series or alerts when communicating with
  # external systems (federation, remote storage, Alertmanager).
  external_labels:
    monitor: "codelab-monitor"

# Load rules once and periodically evaluate them according to the global 'evaluation_interval'.
rule_files:
  # - "first.rules"
  # - "second.rules"

# A scrape configuration containing exactly one endpoint to scrape:
# Here it's Prometheus itself.
scrape_configs:
  # The job name is added as a label `job=<job_name>` to any timeseries scraped from this config.
  - job_name: prometheus

    # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics'
    # scheme defaults to 'http'.

    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9090"]

  - job_name: docker
      # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics'
      # scheme defaults to 'http'.

    static_configs:
      - targets: ["host.docker.internal:9323"]
```

### Run Prometheus in a container

Next, start a Prometheus container using this configuration.

```console
$ docker run --name my-prometheus \
    --mount type=bind,source=/tmp/prometheus.yml,destination=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
    -p 9090:9090 \
    --add-host host.docker.internal=host-gateway \
    prom/prometheus
```

If you're using Docker Desktop, the `--add-host` flag is optional. This flag
makes sure that the host's internal IP gets exposed to the Prometheus
container. Docker Desktop does this by default. The host IP is exposed as the
`host.docker.internal` hostname. This matches the configuration defined in
`prometheus.yml` in the previous step.