---
title: "Verify Prometheus is running and serving metrics | Grafana Labs"
description: "How to verify that metrics are being written to an endpoint"
---

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

# Verify Prometheus is running and serving metrics

Installing and configuring Prometheus is out of scope for this path. Before you change its configuration, confirm that Prometheus is running and that it serves metrics. If it isn’t, nothing reaches Grafana Cloud after you add `remote_write`. Watch video ->

To verify that Prometheus is running and serving metrics:

1. Log in to the machine on which Prometheus is installed.
2. If required, switch to a user that has administrative privileges.
3. Check the Prometheus service status.
   
   For Linux with systemd:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   systemctl status prometheus
   ```
   
   For Windows:
   
   ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy
   
   ```none
   sc query prometheus
   ```
   
   The service should report that it’s active or running:
4. In a browser, open the metrics endpoint of your Prometheus server. By default Prometheus listens on port `9090`.
   
   For example, navigate to `http://localhost:9090/metrics`
   
   This page lists the metrics Prometheus exposes about itself. If it loads, Prometheus is running and reachable.
5. To confirm that Prometheus is also scraping your own targets, navigate to `http://localhost:9090/targets`.
   
   Each target you configured under `scrape_configs` should show the state **UP**. These are the metrics that `remote_write` sends to Grafana Cloud.

**Tip:** If the service isn’t running or a target isn’t **UP**, fix that first. Refer to the [Prometheus documentation](https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/getting_started/) for installation and scrape configuration.