---
title: "Connect Grafana to your data | Grafana Labs"
description: "Introduction to data sources"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Connect Grafana to the data you already have

Your data already lives somewhere: a metrics store, a database, a cloud service, an API. Data sources connect Grafana to those systems so you can query, visualize, and alert on your data without moving it.

## What you’ll learn

This journey covers:

- **What a data source is**: a connection that lets you query your data where it already lives
- **Common data sources** and what each is good for
- **How connecting to data differs from sending it** to Grafana Cloud, like with integrations
- **How to connect** a data source with a guided path
- **What to do next** after your data is flowing: query, visualize, and alert

## Journey duration

20 minutes

## Data sources covered

Prometheus • InfluxDB • Loki • Elasticsearch • CloudWatch • MySQL • PostgreSQL • Infinity • Google Sheets