Prometheus native histograms in Grafana Cloud: Get more precision from your Grafana visualizations

Prometheus native histograms have become generally available in Grafana Cloud, enhancing precision and ease of use for analyzing data distributions such as latency and duration. Initially announced in a public preview in May and adopted across various industries, these histograms now offer higher resolution and dynamic bucket adjustment compared to traditional ones, facilitating more precise data visualization without extensive manual configuration. Prometheus developers confirmed their stability during PromCon EU 2025, and Grafana has integrated these histograms with its Metrics Drilldown feature, allowing users to visualize data immediately without writing PromQL queries. The pricing structure, maintained from the public preview, charges based on active buckets, making it cost-effective for users. Future developments include Native Histogram Custom Buckets (NHCB) for lower costs and increased reliability, though they depend on the experimental Prometheus Remote-Write 2.0. Additionally, Grafana plans to integrate native histograms with its Cloud products to enhance user experience across its offerings.