---
isPrivate: true
title: >-
  How can I graph the percentage change between an earlier value and a current
  value?
description: Datadog, the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring.
breadcrumbs: >-
  Docs > Dashboards > Graphing FAQ > How can I graph the percentage change
  between an earlier value and a current value?
---

# How can I graph the percentage change between an earlier value and a current value?

If you want to visualize how a metric's values have changed in comparison to an earlier time period, do so by leveraging the [Timeshift functions](https://docs.datadoghq.com/dashboards/functions/timeshift/). You can capture a metric's value from an hour, day, week, or month before.

To calculate this, you can create a query such as this:

```text
((current_value - old_value) / old_value) * 100
```

Here's an example where you can see the percentage change of a system metric from one day ago to the present:

{% image
   source="https://docs.dd-static.net/images/dashboards/faq/percentage_timeshift.3acd1cc51a25b2fd1069940b8ccf9a04.png?auto=format"
   alt="percentage timeshift" /%}