Configure Prometheus metrics (Kubernetes)

This guide walks you through configuring your Appsmith instance on Kubernetes (Helm) to expose Actuator metrics for Prometheus. Use it when you want to scrape metrics from Appsmith pods and integrate them into your existing Prometheus or observability stack.

Prerequisites

Appsmith deployed on Kubernetes using the Helm chart (Enterprise or Community Edition). If not yet installed, follow the Kubernetes (k8s) installation guide.
Helm and kubectl installed and configured for your cluster.
Access to edit values.yaml and apply Helm upgrades.

Step 1: Enable Actuator metrics

Add the following environment variables to your Helm values.yaml under applicationConfig. These enable the Actuator metrics endpoint and protect it with basic authentication.

In your Helm values.yaml, add to applicationConfig:

applicationConfig:
  APPSMITH_INTERNAL_PASSWORD: "<your-chosen-password>"
  APPSMITH_ENABLE_OTEL: "true"   # optional: enables Prometheus metric descriptions and OpenTelemetry tracing

APPSMITH_INTERNAL_PASSWORD — Required. This password protects the actuator endpoint with HTTP basic authentication. Choose a strong, secret value and use the same password in your Prometheus scrape config (Step 5).
APPSMITH_ENABLE_OTEL — Optional. Set to "true" to enable Prometheus metric descriptions and OpenTelemetry tracing for more context in your metrics.

For full details on these variables, see Environment Variables.

Step 2: Add Prometheus annotations

Configure pod annotations so Prometheus (or a Prometheus Operator) can discover and scrape the Appsmith pods. In your values.yaml, add:

podAnnotations:
  prometheus.io/scrape: "true"
  prometheus.io/port: "8080"
  prometheus.io/path: "/actuator/prometheus"

Step 3: Apply configuration changes

Apply the change (replace <release_name> and <namespace> with your Helm release name and namespace):

helm upgrade <release_name> appsmith-ee/appsmith -n <namespace> -f values.yaml

Wait until Appsmith is healthy:

kubectl get pods -n <namespace>

Proceed when the Appsmith pod(s) show status Running.

Step 4: Verify the metrics endpoint

Confirm that the Actuator Prometheus endpoint is reachable inside the pod.

Get the Appsmith pod name:
```
kubectl get pods -n <namespace>
```

Exec into the pod:

kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -- bash

From inside the pod, query the metrics endpoint (use the same password you set in Step 1):
```
curl -u "":"<APPSMITH_INTERNAL_PASSWORD>" http://localhost:8080/actuator/prometheus
```

You should see output in Prometheus text format: lines starting with # (comments) and metric definitions (e.g. jvm_memory_used_bytes, http_server_requests_seconds_count, etc.). If you see a response, the endpoint is working.

Step 5: Configure Prometheus scraping

In your Prometheus configuration, add a scrape job that uses HTTP basic auth with the same password. For example, in prometheus.yml under scrape_configs:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'appsmith'
    metrics_path: '/actuator/prometheus'
    basic_auth:
      username: ""
      password: "<APPSMITH_INTERNAL_PASSWORD>"
    ...

Reload or restart Prometheus, then verify in the Prometheus UI that the appsmith job is up and metrics are being collected.

Prerequisites​

Step 1: Enable Actuator metrics​

Step 2: Add Prometheus annotations​

Step 3: Apply configuration changes​

Step 4: Verify the metrics endpoint​

Step 5: Configure Prometheus scraping​

See also​