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Spring Boot Actuator brings production-ready observability and management capabilities to any Spring Boot application. By adding a single starter dependency, you gain HTTP endpoints for health checks, live metrics, environment inspection, thread dumps, and more — all secured and configurable without writing boilerplate code.

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Adding the dependency

Add spring-boot-starter-actuator to your project. Spring Boot auto-configures every feature in this module once the starter is on the classpath. 
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

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What is available by default

After adding the dependency, only the /actuator/health endpoint is exposed over HTTP. A discovery page listing all available endpoints is accessible at /actuator.
By default, only the health endpoint is exposed over HTTP and JMX. Endpoints may contain sensitive information, so you should carefully consider which ones to expose in production.

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Exposing additional endpoints

Use management.endpoints.web.exposure.include to expose more endpoints. The * wildcard selects all endpoints. 
management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: "*"
Before exposing endpoints publicly, ensure they do not contain sensitive information or are placed behind a firewall or Spring Security.

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Controlling access

Each endpoint has an access property with three levels:
ValueBehavior
unrestrictedAvailable to all callers
read-onlyOnly @ReadOperation methods (GET/HEAD) are accessible
noneEndpoint is removed from the application context entirely
To require opt-in rather than opt-out, set the default to none and enable individual endpoints: 
management:
  endpoints:
    access:
      default: none
  endpoint:
    loggers:
      access: read-only
    health:
      access: unrestricted

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Securing actuator endpoints

If Spring Security is on the classpath and no custom SecurityFilterChain bean is present, Spring Boot auto-configuration secures all actuator endpoints except /health. To apply role-based access, define your own security configuration using EndpointRequest: 
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.autoconfigure.security.servlet.EndpointRequest;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.builders.HttpSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.web.SecurityFilterChain;

@Configuration
public class MySecurityConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public SecurityFilterChain securityFilterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.securityMatcher(EndpointRequest.toAnyEndpoint());
        http.authorizeHttpRequests((requests) ->
            requests.anyRequest().hasRole("ENDPOINT_ADMIN"));
        http.httpBasic(withDefaults());
        return http.build();
    }

}
EndpointRequest.to("endpoint") matches the endpoint root and all its subpaths, effectively matching /actuator/endpoint/**.

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Using a separate management port

To run actuator endpoints on a different port from your main application — useful for internal-only access — configure management.server.port: 
management:
  server:
    port: 8081
    address: "127.0.0.1"
Setting the port to -1 disables HTTP management endpoints entirely.

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Customizing the base path

Change the /actuator prefix using management.endpoints.web.base-path: 
management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      base-path: "/manage"
This remaps all endpoints from /actuator/{id} to /manage/{id}.

Endpoints reference

Browse all built-in endpoints and learn how to create custom ones.

Health checks

Understand health status values, indicators, and Kubernetes probes.

Metrics

Explore Micrometer integration and supported monitoring systems.

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