Cloud SQL Query Insights — programmatic access

What this is

GCP Cloud SQL "Query Insights" (the per-query load/latency dashboard in the console) publishes its data to Cloud Monitoring under cloudsql.googleapis.com/database/postgresql/insights/*. You can read it programmatically with the Monitoring v3 timeSeries API — no database connection, no new infra. This gives aggregated, per-normalized-query stats.

What you do not get this way: the individual sampled trace waterfall view (with end-to-end wait events) — that view is console-only. For that, or for ad-hoc query stats over a DB connection, use pg_stat_statements instead.

Prerequisites

• gcloud authenticated as an identity with roles/monitoring.viewer (or broader) on the project. The script uses gcloud auth print-access-token.
• Query Insights must be enabled on the instance (insights_config { query_insights_enabled = true } in Terraform, or via console). If --list-instances shows nothing, it isn't enabled anywhere.

The one gotcha that wastes everyone's time

The instance is selected by the resource label resource_id with value "<project>:<instance>" — NOT database_id as the public metrics docs imply. Filtering on database_id returns:

HTTP 400: The supplied filter does not specify a valid combination of metric and
monitored resource descriptors.

The bundled script handles this for you. If you ever hand-write a filter, use:

metric.type="cloudsql.googleapis.com/database/postgresql/insights/perquery/execution_time"
AND resource.labels.resource_id="<project>:<instance>"

Quick start (use the script)

scripts/query_insights.py is pure Python standard library — no dependencies, no virtualenv. S below points at the script relative to this skill's directory.

S="$(dirname "$0")/scripts/query_insights.py"   # or the absolute path to scripts/query_insights.py

# 1. Discover which instances emit insights data + the exact resource_id to use
uv run "$S" --project MY_PROJECT --list-instances

# 2. Top 10 queries by total execution time on an instance, last 1h
uv run "$S" --project MY_PROJECT --instance my-postgres-instance --top 10

# 3. Other metrics / longer window
uv run "$S" --project MY_PROJECT --instance my-postgres-instance --metric io_time --hours 6
uv run "$S" --project MY_PROJECT --instance my-postgres-instance --metric lock_time --hours 24

# 4. Per-tag breakdown (needs record_application_tags=true on the instance)
uv run "$S" --project MY_PROJECT --instance my-postgres-instance --pertag --metric execution_time

--project falls back to the active gcloud project (gcloud config get-value project) if omitted. The script prefixes --instance with the project automatically; you can also pass a full project:instance string.

Available metrics

Three groups exist, each with the same six metrics:

• insights/perquery/* — broken down per normalized query (querystring, query_hash)
• insights/pertag/* — broken down per application tag (action, route, framework, …); only populated when record_application_tags = true
• insights/aggregate/* — instance-wide totals

Metrics (all CUMULATIVE; *_time are INT64 microseconds, latencies is a DISTRIBUTION):

Metric labels: user, querystring, query_hash, client_addr (empty unless record_client_address = true). Resource: type cloudsql_instance_database, labels project_id, region/location, resource_id, database.

For a metric-selection primer (which metric answers which question), p95/p99 latency, server-side grouping, lock-type/cache-miss breakdowns, and gcloud/PromQL variants, see reference/recipes.md.

Raw API (no script)

TOKEN=$(gcloud auth print-access-token)
PROJECT=my-project
INST="my-project:my-postgres-instance"
curl -s -G "https://monitoring.googleapis.com/v3/projects/${PROJECT}/timeSeries" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" \
  --data-urlencode "filter=metric.type=\"cloudsql.googleapis.com/database/postgresql/insights/perquery/execution_time\" AND resource.labels.resource_id=\"${INST}\"" \
  --data-urlencode "interval.startTime=$(date -u -v-1H +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)" \
  --data-urlencode "interval.endTime=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)" \
  --data-urlencode "aggregation.alignmentPeriod=3600s" \
  --data-urlencode "aggregation.perSeriesAligner=ALIGN_DELTA" \
  --data-urlencode "view=FULL"

(date -u -v-1H is macOS/BSD; on GNU/Linux use date -u -d '1 hour ago'.)

When to reach for something else

• Individual query traces / wait-event waterfall → GCP console Query Insights (no public API).
• Ad-hoc query stats over a live connection, fully portable → enable pg_stat_statements (CREATE EXTENSION pg_stat_statements; — Cloud SQL preloads the library) and query the view.
• Per-statement timing logs → set log_min_duration_statement (use a threshold, not 0, on busy prod instances) and read Cloud Logging.
• Dashboards/alerting → these metrics scrape cleanly into Prometheus/Mimir via GCP Managed Prometheus (pairs well with the lgtm skill).