title: What is the difference between the count and the gauge metric type in DataDog?
body: <p>What is the difference between the <a href="https://docs.datadoghq.com/developers/metrics/types/?tab=count" rel="noreferrer">count</a> and the <a href="https://docs.datadoghq.com/developers/metrics/types/?tab=gauge" rel="noreferrer">gauge</a> metric types in DataDog? Or rather, when should I prefer one over the other? The definitions from their website don't help me much:</p>
  <p>Count:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>The COUNT metric submission type represents the total number of event occurrences in one time interval. A COUNT can be used to track the total number of connections made to a database or the total number of requests to an endpoint. This number of events can accumulate or decrease over time—it is not monotonically increasing.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>Gauge:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>The GAUGE metric submission type represents a snapshot of events in one time interval. This representative snapshot value is the last value submitted to the Agent during a time interval. A GAUGE can be used to take a measure of something reporting continuously—like the available disk space or memory used.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>The <code>count</code> type seems to be somewhat related to the <a href="https://docs.datadoghq.com/developers/metrics/types/?tab=rate" rel="noreferrer"><code>rate</code></a> type, but for me it is unclear why or when I should use <code>count</code> instead of <code>gauge</code>. I mean in principle a measurement of &quot;something&quot; could always be presented as a gauge, couldn't it?</p>