--- title: "How volumetric sampling makes the most of your trace budget in Grafana Cloud" url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-volumetric-sampling-makes-the-most-of-your-trace-budget-in-grafana-cloud-pnboa9sxz source_url: https://grafana.com/blog/how-volumetric-sampling-makes-the-most-of-your-trace-budget-in-grafana-cloud type: article source: "Grafana Labs" published: 2026-08-24T12:15:06.141Z updated: 2026-08-24T12:15:29.182Z tags: ["devops", "observability", "grafana", "finops"] reading_time: 9 upvotes: 1 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How volumetric sampling makes the most of your trace budget in Grafana Cloud **[Grafana Labs](https://daily.dev/sources/grafana)** · 9 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Grafana Cloud's Adaptive Traces now includes a volumetric sampling policy that dynamically balances trace sampling across services and attributes instead of applying a flat probabilistic percentage. Probabilistic sampling preserves traffic imbalances (e.g. a high-volume checkout service drowning out low-frequency services), requiring tedious manual policy tuning. The new volumetric policy automatically selects attributes like service.name, status.code, and k8s.cluster.name, buckets traces, and continuously recalculates sample rates. Testing shows about 25% higher information density (Shannon entropy) versus probabilistic sampling at the same rate. It's a one-click upgrade for existing Adaptive Traces users and default for new users, working alongside anomaly detection, diversity sampling, and standard policies; Adaptive Traces users reportedly cut write volume by 75-90% on average. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the volumetric sampling policy in Grafana Cloud's Adaptive Traces? It is a dynamic sampling policy that automatically picks attributes like service.name, status.code, and k8s.cluster.name, buckets traces by those attributes, and continuously recalculates sample rates per bucket to hit a target percentage. It replaces flat probabilistic sampling, which preserves traffic imbalances by sampling all traces at the same rate regardless of volume. _Teams tuning trace sampling budgets can follow observability tooling updates like this on daily.dev._ ### How much more information does volumetric sampling retain compared to probabilistic sampling at the same rate? Volumetric sampling delivers about 25% higher information density, measured using Shannon entropy, than probabilistic sampling at an equivalent sampling percentage. This means roughly a quarter more unique information is retained for the same amount of stored data, giving a more diverse and representative set of traces for the same cost. _Engineers evaluating tracing costs versus data fidelity can track findings like this on daily.dev._ ### How do I upgrade an existing probabilistic sampling policy to volumetric sampling in Grafana Cloud Adaptive Traces? Existing Adaptive Traces users see a recommendation to convert their probabilistic policy to a volumetric policy with a single click, since volumetric is a drop-in replacement. New users get a volumetric policy configured automatically as part of the onboarding flow's starter policies. _daily.dev helps engineers stay on top of drop-in upgrades like this for their observability stack._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Maximize data value and cut costs: Adaptive Telemetry for metrics, logs, traces, and profiles in Grafana Cloud](https://daily.dev/posts/maximize-data-value-and-cut-costs-adaptive-telemetry-for-metrics-logs-traces-and-profiles-in-gra-cscsmbyb4) · Grafana Labs · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Control trace volume with OpenTelemetry tail-based sampling](https://daily.dev/posts/control-trace-volume-with-opentelemetry-tail-based-sampling-r7d6ugtol) · Datadog · 2 upvotes · 1 comments - [Cost attribution in Grafana Cloud: Manage spend across observability and testing workflows](https://daily.dev/posts/cost-attribution-in-grafana-cloud-manage-spend-across-observability-and-testing-workflows-qpwruuysz) · Grafana Labs · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#grafana](https://daily.dev/tags/grafana), [#finops](https://daily.dev/tags/finops) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-volumetric-sampling-makes-the-most-of-your-trace-budget-in-grafana-cloud-pnboa9sxz)