Monitor AWS API Gateway with SigNoz

One-Click Integration

Step 1: Connect Your AWS Account

Follow the One-Click AWS Integrations Guide to:

1. Deploy the CloudFormation stack
2. Connect your AWS account to SigNoz

Step 2: Enable API Gateway Monitoring

Once connected, SigNoz will auto-discover your API Gateway APIs and begin collecting:

• CloudWatch Metrics: Request count, latency, error rates
• Access Logs: (if enabled and published to CloudWatch)

What's Collected

Pre-built Dashboards

Navigate to Dashboards and search for "API Gateway" to find automatically imported dashboards.

Manual Setup (CloudWatch Exporter)

To collect API Gateway metrics manually, you can use the Prometheus CloudWatch Exporter. This tool scrapes metrics from AWS CloudWatch and exposes them in Prometheus format, which the OpenTelemetry Collector can then scrape and forward to SigNoz.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have:

• OpenTelemetry Collector installed and configured. See Get Started with OTel Collector.
• Java 11 or higher installed on the host machine (for JAR-based setup), or Docker (for container-based setup).
• AWS credentials configured via environment variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY), IAM role, or ~/.aws/credentials.
• IAM permissions for the credentials:
  • cloudwatch:ListMetrics
  • cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics

Where to Run the CloudWatch Exporter

The CloudWatch Exporter should run on a machine that:

1. Has network access to AWS CloudWatch APIs.
2. Has AWS credentials configured.
3. Is network-accessible from your OpenTelemetry Collector.

For SigNoz Cloud users, run the exporter on any EC2 instance, VM, or container with AWS credentials. The OTel Collector on the same host will forward metrics to SigNoz Cloud.

For Self-Hosted users, run the exporter on the same host as your OTel Collector, or ensure network connectivity between them.

Step 1: Create Configuration File

Create a file named api-gateway-metrics.yaml with the following configuration:

region: <aws-region>
metrics:
  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApiGateway
    aws_metric_name: Count
    aws_dimensions: [ApiName, Stage]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApiGateway
    aws_metric_name: Latency
    aws_dimensions: [ApiName, Stage]
    aws_statistics: [Average]
    aws_extended_statistics: [p99]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApiGateway
    aws_metric_name: IntegrationLatency
    aws_dimensions: [ApiName, Stage]
    aws_statistics: [Average]
    aws_extended_statistics: [p99]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApiGateway
    aws_metric_name: 4XXError
    aws_dimensions: [ApiName, Stage]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

  - aws_namespace: AWS/ApiGateway
    aws_metric_name: 5XXError
    aws_dimensions: [ApiName, Stage]
    aws_statistics: [Sum]

Replace the following:

• <aws-region>: Your AWS region where API Gateway APIs are deployed (e.g., us-east-1, eu-west-1, ap-south-1).

See example configurations for more service templates.

Step 2: Download and Run the Exporter

curl -LO https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/prometheus/cloudwatch/cloudwatch_exporter/0.16.0/cloudwatch_exporter-0.16.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar

java -jar cloudwatch_exporter-0.16.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar 9106 api-gateway-metrics.yaml

docker run -d \
  --name cloudwatch-exporter \
  -p 9106:9106 \
  -v $(pwd)/api-gateway-metrics.yaml:/config/config.yml \
  -e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID \
  -e AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY \
  prom/cloudwatch-exporter

Verify the exporter is running by checking the metrics endpoint:

curl http://localhost:9106/metrics | grep aws_apigateway

You should see metrics like aws_apigateway_count_sum, aws_apigateway_latency_average, etc.

Step 3: Configure OpenTelemetry Collector

Add the following prometheus receiver to your existing otel-collector-config.yaml to scrape the CloudWatch Exporter:

receivers:
  prometheus:
    config:
      scrape_configs:
        - job_name: 'api-gateway-cloudwatch'
          scrape_interval: 60s
          static_configs:
            - targets: ['<exporter-host>:9106']

Replace the following:

• <exporter-host>: The hostname or IP where the CloudWatch Exporter is running. Use localhost if running on the same machine.

Enable the prometheus receiver in your metrics pipeline by updating the service section:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp, prometheus]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp]

Restart your OpenTelemetry Collector to apply the changes.

Validate

To confirm that API Gateway metrics are flowing to SigNoz:

1. Navigate to Dashboards → New Dashboard → New Panel in SigNoz.
2. In the query builder, search for metrics starting with aws_apigateway_ (e.g., aws_apigateway_count_sum).
3. Verify that metrics appear with api_name and stage labels matching your APIs.

If you see metrics with appropriate labels, your setup is working correctly.

Collecting Access Logs

If API Gateway access logs are enabled and sent to CloudWatch, use the awscloudwatch receiver:

receivers:
  awscloudwatch:
    region: <aws-region>
    logs:
      poll_interval: 1m
      groups:
        named:
          /aws/api-gateway/<api-name>:

Replace <aws-region> and <api-name> with your actual values.

See Send CloudWatch Logs to SigNoz for full configuration.