---
title: >-
  What is the granularity of my graphs? Am I seeing raw data or aggregates on my
  graph?
description: Datadog, the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring.
breadcrumbs: >-
  Docs > Metrics > Metrics Guides > What is the granularity of my graphs? Am I
  seeing raw data or aggregates on my graph?
---

# What is the granularity of my graphs? Am I seeing raw data or aggregates on my graph?

Datadog graphs generally display local aggregates instead of the original submitted values.

## Why?{% #why %}

Data is stored at a 1 second granularity, but data can be aggregated when displayed.

For a graph on a 1-week time window, it would require sending hundreds of thousands of values to your browser. Not all of these points can be graphed on a widget occupying a small portion of your screen. For these reasons, data is aggregated to send a limited number of points to your browser to render a graph.

For instance, on a one-day view with the 'lines' display there is one datapoint every 5 min. Datadog's backend slices the 1-day interval into 288 buckets of 5 minutes. For each bucket, all data rolls up into a single value. For instance, the datapoint rendered on your graph with the timestamp 07:00 is actually an aggregate of all real datapoints submitted between 07:00:00 and 07:05:00 that day.

By default, the rollup aggregate is computed by averaging all real values, which tends to [smooth out graphs as you zoom out](https://docs.datadoghq.com/dashboards/faq/why-does-zooming-out-a-timeframe-also-smooth-out-my-graphs.md).

## What can you do?{% #what-can-you-do %}

Data aggregation needs to occur whether you have 1 or 1000 sources as long as you look at a large time window.

However what you can do is control how this aggregation is performed by using the [rollup function](https://docs.datadoghq.com/dashboards/functions/rollup.md):

- .rollup(max)/ .rollup(min) have each point be the local MAXIMUM/MINIMUM of the X min of data it represents
- .rollup(avg) is the default value: each point of your graph is the AVERAGE value of the X min of data it represents
- .rollup(sum) compute the SUM of all values submitted during the X min period
- .rollup(avg,60) defines that graph points should be 1 min averages, etc.

**Note**: Datadog's backend tries to keep the number of intervals to a number below ~300. So if you do rollup(60) over a 2-month time window, you can't have the one-minute granularity requested.

## Example{% #example %}

{% image
   source="https://docs.dd-static.net/images/metrics/guide/graph_granularity.c6a0209b3e03f870f376c065a87a587c.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=850 1x, https://docs.dd-static.net/images/metrics/guide/graph_granularity.c6a0209b3e03f870f376c065a87a587c.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=850&dpr=2 2x"
   alt="graph_granularity" /%}

The graph above is a bar graph over the past 2 hours. The graph displays one datapoint per minute. They are not the real values submitted but local aggregates, each one representing one minute of your metric data.

## Is it possible to see the real data submitted?{% #is-it-possible-to-see-the-real-data-submitted %}

Yes, if you zoom in enough, the graph displays the original values. For example, the Datadog Agent submits data every ~15 seconds. If you look at a 45-minute (or less) time window, the values are unaggregated.