Drilldown fundamentals on Grafana Labs

Investigate without writing queries

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:09:31 -0500

Investigate without writing queries

You need to dig into your metrics and logs, but writing PromQL and LogQL takes time to learn. The Grafana Drilldown apps let you investigate visually, by pointing and clicking, so you can find anomalies and patterns without writing a query.

What you’ll learn

Here’s what this journey covers:

What Metrics Drilldown and Logs Drilldown are, and what you can do in each one
How to filter and visualize metrics with Grafana Metrics Drilldown
How to filter logs by labels, fields, and text with Grafana Logs Drilldown
How to continue a finding in Explore. In Metrics Drilldown you can also copy the page URL or bookmark the view. In Logs Drilldown you can add a panel to a dashboard or create an alert when those actions are shown

Journey duration

25-30 minutes

What are the Grafana Drilldown apps?

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:09:31 -0500

What are the Grafana Drilldown apps?

Grafana Drilldown apps are queryless interfaces for metrics, logs, profiles, and traces. You point, click, and filter.

This journey covers Metrics Drilldown and Logs Drilldown. Profiles Drilldown and Traces Drilldown are the other two apps. In Grafana 12 and later, Grafana includes the Drilldown apps in the same Drilldown section.

What you can do

Navigate metrics by label and by keywords in the search bar, and logs by service, label, field, and text
Filter without writing PromQL or LogQL
Visualize metrics and log volume automatically
Continue in Explore to see the same selections there. For logs, Explore opens with a query based on what you selected. For metrics, Explore opens the visualization.

From the Grafana menu, select Drilldown, then Metrics or Logs.

What each tool is for

Tool	What it is for
Drilldown apps	Investigate metrics or logs without writing a query
Explore	Query and analyze data directly. From a logs panel, Explore opens with a query based on your selections. From a metrics panel, Explore opens the visualization
Add to Dashboard	On a Logs Drilldown panel, add that panel to a new or existing dashboard, when the action is shown
Create alert	On a Logs Drilldown panel, create an alert rule from the panel query, when the action is shown

Prerequisites

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:09:31 -0500

Prerequisites

You can use the Drilldown apps in Grafana Cloud or in self-managed Grafana. Metrics Drilldown is installed by default in Grafana Cloud and in self-managed Grafana. Logs Drilldown is installed by default in Grafana and Grafana Cloud. If you are upgrading an older Grafana installation, you might need to install Logs Drilldown yourself.

Every Drilldown app requires the datasources:explore permission.

Data you need

Signal	What you need
Metrics	A Prometheus or Prometheus-compatible data source. Self-managed Grafana must be version 11.6 or later, and the data source scrape interval must match your metrics system’s scrape interval.
Logs	A Loki data source. Logs Drilldown is installed by default in Grafana and Grafana Cloud. When you enable it in the Loki configuration on self-managed Grafana, the access page requires Grafana 13.1.0 or later and Loki 3.2.0 or later, plus pattern ingestion, structured metadata, the volume endpoint, and log level detection.

Don’t have data yet?

Try the apps on Grafana Play, or use one of these journeys to get data into Grafana, then come back.

Introduction to integrations Introduction to monitoring cloud provider data Send data from external collectors Introduction to data sources