Metrics Quickstart

Send counters, gauges, and distributions from your code to track things like email.sent, checkout.failed, or queue.depth, and pivot directly into related traces, logs, and errors when something looks off.

1
Install

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npm install --save @sentry/nextjs@^10.25.0

2
Setup

Initialize your Sentry SDK with your DSN to start sending metrics. Metrics are automatically enabled in SDK versions 10.25.0 and above.

The code snippet shows the basic initialization required to enable Metrics in your application.

Learn more about Metrics
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import * as Sentry from "@sentry/nextjs";

Sentry.init({
  dsn: "https://examplePublicKey@o0.ingest.sentry.io/0",
  // that's it - metrics are enabled by default!
});

3
Configure

Metric Types

Sentry supports three metric types: Counters for tracking incrementing values (e.g., email.sent, checkout.failed), Gauges for values that go up and down (e.g., queue.depth), and Distributions for tracking value distributions (e.g., response.time).

Learn more about metric types
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import * as Sentry from "@sentry/nextjs";

// Counter — track an incrementing value
Sentry.metrics.count('email.sent', 1);

// Counter — track failures
Sentry.metrics.count('checkout.failed', 1);

// Gauge — track a value that can go up and down
Sentry.metrics.gauge('queue.depth', 42);

// Distribution — track the distribution of a value
Sentry.metrics.distribution('response.time', 187.5);

Attributes

Add custom attributes to metrics for filtering and grouping. You can define your own dimensions like browser, app_version, page, and so on, to slice your metrics data in the dashboard. Every metric automatically includes environment, release, and SDK information as default attributes.

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Sentry.metrics.count('button_click', 1, {
  attributes: {
    browser: 'Firefox',
    app_version: '1.0.0',
  },
});

4
See It In Action

View Metrics in the Explore Tab

After sending metrics, go to Explore > Metrics to see your data. The Aggregates tab shows trends and totals across any attributes (e.g., sum(metrics_value) grouped by email_type). The Samples tab shows individual metric events with direct links to their trace - so you can jump straight into the logs, spans, and errors that occurred at the same moment.

Learn more about viewing metrics
View Metrics in the Explore Tab

Pivot from Metrics to Traces

When a metric spikes or dips, click into a sample to see the exact trace that produced it. Open the related spans, logs, and errors to understand why the metric moved - slow database query, failed API call, bad deploy, etc. Debugging becomes a single flow: Metric spike → open a sample → trace waterfall → root cause.

Learn more about metrics debugging flow
Pivot from Metrics to Traces

Next Steps

Explore the full documentation to learn more about Metrics features, use cases, and best practices.

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