---
title: Scrape Prometheus endpoints
description: Use the Telegraf prometheus input plugin to scrape Prometheus metrics endpoints and write the metrics to InfluxDB 3.
url: https://docs.influxdata.com/telegraf/v1/examples/scrape-prometheus/
estimated_tokens: 755
product: Telegraf Enterprise
version: v1
publisher: InfluxData
canonical: https://docs.influxdata.com/telegraf/v1/examples/scrape-prometheus/
date: '2026-08-14T10:06:40-06:00'
lastmod: '2026-08-14T10:06:40-06:00'
---

Scrape applications and exporters that expose Prometheus `/metrics`endpoints, and write the metrics to InfluxDB 3.
This example scrapes a [node\_exporter](https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter)instance and an application endpoint.

## Configuration

```toml
[[inputs.prometheus]]
  ## Endpoints to scrape on each collection interval.
  urls = [
    "http://node1.example.com:9100/metrics",
    "http://app1.example.com:8080/metrics"
  ]

  ## Metric layout. The plugin default is 1. Version 2 is recommended.
  metric_version = 2

  ## Tag metrics with the scraped URL.
  url_tag = "url"

[[outputs.influxdb_v3]]
  urls = ["http://localhost:8181"]
  token = "AUTH_TOKEN"
  database = "DATABASE_NAME"
```

Replace the following:

* `AUTH_TOKEN`:
  your InfluxDB authorization token
* `DATABASE_NAME`:
  the database to write to

## How it works

* **`urls`** lists the endpoints to scrape.
  The plugin requests each one on the collection interval and parses the
  exposition-format response.
* **`metric_version = 2`** stores each Prometheus sample as a metric named`prometheus`, with labels as tags and the Prometheus metric name as the
  field key.
  This layout is sparse, works well with column-oriented destinations
  like InfluxDB 3, and round-trips cleanly if you later re-serialize
  metrics with the[Prometheus output data format](/telegraf/v1/data_formats/output/prometheus/).
  The plugin’s default is `1` (dense layout: metric name as measurement,`counter`/`gauge` field names), kept for backward compatibility.
* **`url_tag`** records which endpoint each metric came from.

## Example output

```text
prometheus,cpu=cpu0,mode=idle,url=http://node1.example.com:9100/metrics node_cpu_seconds_total=18472.1 1709572230000000000
prometheus,url=http://node1.example.com:9100/metrics node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes=5836500992 1709572230000000000
prometheus,method=GET,path=/api/orders,status=200,url=http://app1.example.com:8080/metrics http_requests_total=84721 1709572230000000000
```

## Extend this example

* In Kubernetes, scrape dynamically instead of listing URLs: set`monitor_kubernetes_pods = true` to discover pods by annotation, or`kubernetes_services` for service endpoints.
  See the [plugin documentation](/telegraf/v1/input-plugins/prometheus/).
* To accept pushed Prometheus data instead of scraping, pair[http\_listener\_v2](/telegraf/v1/input-plugins/http_listener_v2/) with
  the [Prometheus input data format](/telegraf/v1/data_formats/input/prometheus/)or the[Prometheus Remote Write input data format](/telegraf/v1/data_formats/input/prometheus-remote-write/).
* Histogram and summary metrics accumulate state.
  If you re-expose scraped metrics for Prometheus to collect, use the[prometheus\_client output plugin](/telegraf/v1/output-plugins/prometheus_client/).

#### Related

* [](/telegraf/v1/input-plugins/prometheus/)
* [Prometheus input data format](/telegraf/v1/data_formats/input/prometheus/)
* [Prometheus output data format](/telegraf/v1/data_formats/output/prometheus/)