What does scrape_interval configure in Prometheus?

In Prometheus, the scrape_interval parameter specifieshow frequently the Prometheus server should scrape metrics from its configured targets. Each target exposes an HTTP endpoint (usually /metrics) that Prometheus collects data from at a fixed cadence. By default, the scrape_interval is set to1 minute, but it can be overridden globally or per job configuration in the Prometheus YAML configuration file.

This setting directly affects theresolution of collected time series data—a shorter interval increases data granularity but also adds network and storage overhead, while a longer interval reduces load but might miss short-lived metric variations.

It is important to distinguish scrape_interval from evaluation_interval, which defines how often Prometheus evaluates recording and alerting rules. Thus, scrape_interval pertains only todata collection frequency, not to alerting or rule evaluation.