How do I delete a metric in CloudWatch?

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Note: If you receive errors when you run AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands, then see Troubleshoot AWS CLI errors. Also, make sure that you're using the most recent AWS CLI version.

You can't delete CloudWatch metrics. Metrics expire based on retention schedules.

Metrics that didn't have any new data points in the previous two weeks are removed from the CloudWatch console. They don't appear when you type the metric name or dimension name in the search box of the All metrics tab in the console. The metrics also aren't included in the output when you run the list-metrics AWS CLI command.

The data is stored for 15 months. To query the metrics, run the get-metric-data or get-metric-statistics commands.

Note: AWS offers pay-as-you-go pricing. A fee is charged only when new data points are pushed to your metrics.

To have metrics reappear on the console, publish new data points to the metrics with the metric name, namespace, and dimensions.