Formats

All exporters the following exposition formats:

OpenMetrics text format
Prometheus text format
Prometheus protobuf format

Moreover, gzip encoding is supported for each of these formats.

Scraping with a Prometheus server

The Prometheus server sends an Accept header to specify which format is requested. By default, the Prometheus server will scrape OpenMetrics text format with gzip encoding. If the Prometheus server is started with --enable-feature=native-histograms, it will scrape Prometheus protobuf format instead.

Viewing with a Web Browser

If you view the /metrics endpoint with your Web browser you will see Prometheus text format. For quick debugging of the other formats, exporters provide a debug URL parameter:

/metrics?debug=openmetrics: View OpenMetrics text format.
/metrics?debug=text: View Prometheus text format.
/metrics?debug=prometheus-protobuf: View a text representation of the Prometheus protobuf format.