Which metric type sends the sum of all received datapoints?

The count metric type is designed to accumulate the total number of occurrences of a specific event over time. When data points are sent as counts, they represent the sum of all individual events received within a certain timeframe. This makes them particularly useful for tracking things like the number of errors, requests, or user logins, where the primary interest is in the total quantity of occurrences rather than their individual values or distributions.

In contrast, histograms and distributions provide more nuanced insights, such as the frequency and spread of values across a specified range, which do not simply sum all data points but analyze how they vary. Gauges reflect a value at a specific point in time, like temperature or CPU usage, but do not accumulate data over time in the same continuous manner as counts.

Thus, the count metric type distinctly serves the role of summing all received data points, making it the most suitable choice for this question.