_index.md

title	Instrumenting
weight	2

Six metric types are available. Pick based on what your value does:

Type	Value goes	Use for
Counter	only up	requests served, errors, bytes sent
Gauge	up and down	queue depth, active connections, memory usage
Histogram	observations in buckets	request latency, request size — when you need quantiles in queries
Summary	observations (count + sum)	request latency, request size — when average is enough
Info	static key-value pairs	build version, environment metadata
Enum	one of N states	task state, lifecycle phase

See the Prometheus documentation on metric types and instrumentation best practices for deeper guidance on choosing between Histogram and Summary.

Disabling _created metrics

By default counters, histograms, and summaries export an additional series suffixed with _created and a value of the unix timestamp for when the metric was created. If this information is not helpful, it can be disabled by setting the environment variable PROMETHEUS_DISABLE_CREATED_SERIES=True or in code:

from prometheus_client import disable_created_metrics
disable_created_metrics()