---
title: NATS queue is reporting more messages than expected to Scaleway Cockpit
description: Understand apparent NATS queue discrepancies in Scaleway Cockpit with our troubleshooting guide.
tags: nats cockpit messages queues
dates:
  validation: 2025-05-28
  posted: 2025-05-28
---

## My NATS queue is reporting an unexpectedly large number of messages to Cockpit

You may be viewing your NATS queue's metrics in [Scaleway Cockpit](/nats/how-to/monitor-nats-cockpit/), and observe an unexpectedly large volume of messages, which appears higher than your expected usage.

### Cause

This is due to the way that the number of messages is displayed on Grafana. The count is accurate, but perhaps not intuitive.

### Solution

You can better understand the volume of messages by considering the following points:

- The message count reported by Grafana includes not only published messages, but also requests and replies between clients and the NATS server, such as publish requests, pull requests, and replies.
- For example, when a client sends a `nats stream ls` request, this counts as 1 message IN (the request) and 1 message OUT (the reply), even if no actual messages are being published or consumed.
- Additionally, the message count can increase due to consumer pull actions, even if there are no new messages published. This is because each pull request is counted as a message, regardless of whether any messages are actually returned.