# Estimate Actions for migration

> Estimate Temporal Cloud Actions and Actions per second from a self-hosted Temporal Service before migrating to Temporal Cloud.

Before you migrate from a self-hosted Temporal Service to Temporal Cloud, you can measure your current Action usage to help predict your Cloud usage and costs.

Use server metrics to estimate Actions per second (APS) and peak load.
Use representative Workflow Execution Histories to understand how many Actions a typical Workflow Execution creates.
Estimate storage separately from Actions.

For details about which operations count as Actions in Temporal Cloud, see [Temporal Cloud Actions](/cloud/actions).

## Choose an estimation method

Use one or more of the following methods depending on what you need to estimate.

| Method | Use it to estimate | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Self-hosted server metrics | APS, peak APS, and Action counts over a fixed time range | Best for sizing Namespace limits and understanding usage patterns. |
| Workflow Execution History samples | Actions per representative Workflow Execution | Best for understanding workload shape by Workflow Type. Some [Actions do not appear](/cloud/actions) in Event History. |
| Storage estimates | Event History storage | Storage is [priced separately](/cloud/pricing#pricing-model) from Actions. |

## Estimate APS from self-hosted server metrics

Temporal Server versions later than 1.17 provide an `action` metric.
Use this metric to estimate Actions per second from a self-hosted Temporal Service.

Temporal Server versions 1.22.3 and later provide an `action` metric that more closely reflects current Temporal Cloud Action pricing, including Local Activity metering.
For Temporal Server versions from 1.17 through 1.22.2, use the `action` metric to understand server load, but do not treat it as a precise billable Action estimate.

To calculate total APS, use the following PromQL query:

```promql
sum(rate(action{service_name="frontend"}[1m]))
```

To calculate APS by Namespace, use the following PromQL query:

```promql
sum(rate(action{service_name="frontend"}[1m])) by (exported_namespace)
```

Depending on your metrics exporter setup, the Namespace label might be `namespace` instead of `exported_namespace`.

For a Grafana dashboard example, see the [`server-general.json`](https://github.com/temporalio/dashboards/blob/master/server/server-general.json) dashboard in the Temporal dashboards repository.

For Datadog, use a query like the following to calculate Actions per second:

```text
sum:io.temporal.server.action.count{$server-name}.as_rate()
```

## Estimate Action counts over a fixed time range

To estimate total Actions during a fixed time range, use `increase()` over the range you want to measure.

For example, to estimate total Actions over 30 days, use the following PromQL query:

```promql
sum(increase(action{service_name="frontend"}[30d]))
```

To estimate Actions for one Namespace, add the Namespace label:

```promql
sum(increase(action{service_name="frontend", exported_namespace="default"}[30d]))
```

When you run fixed-range queries in Grafana, set the end of the dashboard time window to the end of the date range that you want to measure.
For example, to measure Actions for the 30-day period ending March 31, set the dashboard end time to March 31.

## Estimate Actions from Workflow Execution Histories

You can estimate Actions per Workflow Execution by counting billable events in representative Workflow Execution Histories.
This method is useful when you need to understand how much Action usage a Workflow Type creates.

1. Choose representative Workflow Executions for each Workflow Type.
2. Download the Event History for each Workflow Execution from the Web UI or API.
3. Count the events that map to Temporal Cloud Actions.
   For the list of Action types and corresponding History Event types, see [Temporal Cloud Actions](/cloud/actions).
4. Multiply the Action count by the expected number of Workflow Executions in the period you want to estimate.

This method produces an estimate.
Some Actions do not appear directly in Event History, including Queries and some Activity Heartbeat Actions.
If you use Global Namespaces, account for the additional Action and storage cost.
Estimate storage separately from Workflow Action counts.

## Estimate storage separately

Temporal Cloud storage is priced separately from Actions.
To estimate storage, collect the following information:

- Event History size for representative Workflow Executions.
- Retention Period for closed Workflow Executions.
- Duration for open Workflow Executions.
- Expected number of Workflow Executions.

For current storage pricing, see [Temporal Cloud pricing](/cloud/pricing).