Grafana MCP server

A [Model Context Protocol][mcp] (MCP) server for Grafana.

This provides access to your Grafana instance and the surrounding ecosystem.

Quick Start

Requires uv. Add the following to your MCP client configuration (e.g. Claude Desktop, Cursor):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grafana": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-grafana"],
      "env": {
        "GRAFANA_URL": "http://localhost:3000",
        "GRAFANA_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_TOKEN": "<your service account token>"
      }
    }
  }
}

For Grafana Cloud, replace GRAFANA_URL with your instance URL (e.g. https://myinstance.grafana.net). See Usage for more installation options including Docker, binary, and Helm.

Requirements

• Grafana version 9.0 or later is required for full functionality. Some features, particularly datasource-related operations, may not work correctly with earlier versions due to missing API endpoints.

Features

The following features are currently available in MCP server. This list is for informational purposes only and does not represent a roadmap or commitment to future features.

Dashboards

• Search for dashboards: Find dashboards by title, folder UID, tag, or starred status
• Get dashboard by UID: Retrieve full dashboard details using its unique identifier. Pass optional version to load a saved snapshot instead of the current dashboard. Warning: Large dashboards can consume significant context window space.
• List dashboard versions: List saved versions of a dashboard as compact metadata (version number, author, timestamp, save message)
• Get dashboard summary: Get a compact overview of a dashboard including title, panel count, panel types, variables, and metadata without the full JSON to minimize context window usage
• Get dashboard property: Extract specific parts of a dashboard using JSONPath expressions (e.g., $.title, $.panels[*].title) to fetch only needed data and reduce context window consumption
• Update or create a dashboard: Modify existing dashboards or create new ones. Warning: Requires full dashboard JSON which can consume large amounts of context window space.
• Patch dashboard: Apply specific changes to a dashboard without requiring the full JSON, significantly reducing context window usage for targeted modifications
• Get panel queries and datasource info: Get the title, query string, and datasource information (including UID and type, if available) from every panel in a dashboard

Run Panel Query

Note: Run panel query tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add runpanelquery to your --enabled-tools flag.

• Run panel query: Execute a dashboard panel's query with custom time ranges and variable overrides. Infinity panels run when the query uses the backend or jq-backend parser (Google Sheets queries always do); the default simple parser and the UQL and GROQ parsers work only in the browser. Neo4j panels on the kniepdennis-neo4j-datasource plugin run their Cypher query through the plugin, which opens read-only sessions.

Context Window Management

The dashboard tools now include several strategies to manage context window usage effectively (issue #101):

• Use get_dashboard_summary for dashboard overview and planning modifications
• Use get_dashboard_property with JSONPath when you only need specific dashboard parts
• Avoid get_dashboard_by_uid unless you specifically need the complete dashboard JSON

Datasources

• List and fetch datasource information: View all configured datasources and retrieve detailed information about each.
• Supported datasource types: Prometheus, Loki, ClickHouse, CloudWatch, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Snowflake, Athena.

Query Examples

Note: Query examples tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add examples to your --enabled-tools flag.

• Get query examples: Retrieve example queries for different datasource types to learn query syntax.

Prometheus Querying

• Query Prometheus: Execute PromQL queries (supports both instant and range metric queries) against Prometheus datasources.
• Query Prometheus metadata: Retrieve metric metadata, metric names, label names, and label values from Prometheus datasources.
• Query histogram percentiles: Calculate histogram percentile values (p50, p90, p95, p99) using histogram_quantile.

Loki Querying

• Query Loki logs and metrics: Run both log queries and metric queries using LogQL against Loki datasources.
• Query Loki metadata: Retrieve label names, label values, and stream statistics from Loki datasources.
• Query Loki patterns: Retrieve log patterns detected by Loki to identify common log structures and anomalies.

InfluxDB Querying

Note: InfluxDB tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add influxdb to your --enabled-tools flag.

• Query InfluxDB: Execute queries against InfluxDB datasources using either InfluxQL (v1.x) or Flux (v2.x). The dialect is inferred from the datasource configuration, or can be set explicitly via the dialect parameter.

SQL Datasource Querying

Note: SQL tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add sql to your --enabled-tools flag. Back-compat aliases clickhouse, snowflake, and athena also work.

Unified SQL tools support ClickHouse, Snowflake, Athena, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, and BigQuery through a single set of tools. Queries go through Grafana's datasource plugins, so authentication is handled by datasource configuration — credentials are never seen by the MCP server.

• List databases/schemas/catalogs: Discover organizational units for a SQL datasource. For Athena, omit catalog to list catalogs, or pass a catalog to list databases.
• List tables: List tables in a database or schema with metadata (row counts, sizes where available).
• Describe table schema: Get column names, types, nullability, defaults, and comments.
• Query SQL: Execute SQL queries with datasource-specific macro substitution ($__timeFilter(col), $__from/$__to, $__interval, ${varname}), automatic limit enforcement, and template variable support.

For BigQuery, configure the grafana-bigquery-datasource plugin in Grafana. Discovery uses database for the project and schema for the dataset. If database is omitted, the project defaults to datasource defaultProject, then the plugin's /defaultProjects endpoint (including GCE project discovery). Metadata is fetched through APIs only, without query jobs or table scans. Column descriptions and nested types are included; the plugin omits table descriptions/types, column nullability, and defaults.

BigQuery queries require qualified table references such as `my-project.my_dataset.fct_events` and use the datasource's billing project. Optional location defaults to datasource processingLocation. Use ${name:sqlstring} for escaped string variables. Row limits do not limit bytes scanned or query costs.

CloudWatch Querying

Note: CloudWatch tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add cloudwatch to your --enabled-tools flag.

• List CloudWatch namespaces: Discover available AWS CloudWatch namespaces.
• List CloudWatch metrics: List metrics available in a specific namespace.
• List CloudWatch dimensions: Get dimensions for filtering metric queries.
• Query CloudWatch: Execute CloudWatch metric queries with time range support.
• List CloudWatch log groups: Discover log groups, optionally filtered by name prefix.
• List CloudWatch log group fields: Discover the fields available in a log group.
• Query CloudWatch Logs: Run CloudWatch Logs Insights queries across one or more log groups.

Google Cloud Logging Querying

Note: Google Cloud Logging tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add cloudlogging to your --enabled-tools flag. Requires the Google Cloud Logging datasource plugin (googlecloud-logging-datasource) version 1.8.0 or later, which needs Grafana 11.2+. Older plugin versions return a different response layout and query_cloud_logging reports an error asking for an upgrade.

• List Cloud Logging projects: Discover the GCP project IDs the datasource can read logs from.
• List Cloud Logging buckets and views: Discover log buckets and log views to scope a query.
• Query Cloud Logging: Run Cloud Logging query language filters (e.g. resource.type="k8s_container" AND severity>=ERROR) with time range and limit; returns entries newest-first with severity, body, labels, and trace ID. GCP authentication is handled by the datasource configuration.

Graphite Querying

Note: Graphite tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add graphite to your --enabled-tools flag.

• Query Graphite: Execute Graphite render API queries against a Graphite datasource.
• List Graphite metrics: Browse and discover Graphite metric paths.
• List Graphite tags: List available Graphite tags and tag values.
• Query Graphite density: Query Graphite metric density for a given pattern.

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch Querying

Note: Elasticsearch/OpenSearch tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add elasticsearch to your --enabled-tools flag.

• Query Elasticsearch/OpenSearch: Execute search queries against Elasticsearch or OpenSearch datasources using either Lucene query syntax or Elasticsearch Query DSL. Supports filtering by time range and retrieving logs, metrics, or any indexed data. Returns documents with their index, ID, source fields, and optional relevance score.

Quickwit Querying

Note: Quickwit tools are disabled by default. To enable them, add quickwit to your --enabled-tools flag.

• Query Quickwit: Execute search queries against Quickwit datasources using Lucene query syntax o