Settings reference

Every key PERFORMANCE_MONITOR recognizes. Anything omitted falls back to the default listed here. Source of truth: django_perfy/utils.py's _DEFAULTS dict.

Core

Key	Type	Default	Description
ENABLED	bool	True	Master switch. When False, middleware, mixin, snapshots and aggregation all no-op.
SAMPLING_RATE	float	0.1	Fraction (0.0–1.0) of normal requests to record. Slow or error responses are always recorded.
SLOW_REQUEST_THRESHOLD_MS	int	500	Requests at or above this always get captured regardless of sampling.
EXCLUDED_PATHS	list[str]	["/health/", "/metrics/", "/favicon.ico"]	Path prefixes the middleware skips entirely.
USER_ID_SALT	str	"changeme-in-prod"	HMAC salt for hashing user ids. Set a real secret in production.
SERVER_IP	str | None	None	Recorded on every captured row as server_ip. Auto-detected from the host when left blank — set explicitly if auto-detection picks the wrong interface (e.g. behind Docker/NAT).

Retention

Key	Type	Default	Description
RETENTION_DAYS_RAW	int	30	Age after which raw API/WebSocket rows are purged.
RETENTION_DAYS_RESOURCES	int	90	Age after which resource snapshots are purged.

Purging is not automatic — see Celery setup for scheduling purge_old_logs.

Services and resources

Key	Type	Default	Description
QUEUE_NAME	str	"performance_logs"	Celery queue used for performance tasks.
ENABLE_PARTITIONING	bool	False	Reserved for table-partitioning strategies.
RESOURCE_SNAPSHOT_INTERVAL_MINUTES	int	15	How often the web process snapshots its own resources (via the built-in fallback timer — see Celery setup).
SERVICES	list[dict]	[]	Declared services to monitor. Each dict needs type (web, celery_worker, celery_beat, redis, postgres, system) and name. See Configuration.
MONITOR_POSTGRES	bool	True	Collect Postgres metrics in resource snapshots.
MONITOR_REDIS	bool	True	Collect Redis metrics in resource snapshots.

Database

Key	Type	Default	Description
DATABASE	str	"default"	DB alias every performance model reads from and writes to. See Secondary database.

Header and body capture

Key	Type	Default	Description
CAPTURE_HEADERS	bool	False	When True, store request/response headers on APIRequestLog. Off by default — see Configuration.
REDACTED_HEADERS	list[str]	["authorization", "cookie", "set-cookie", "x-api-key", "x-auth-token", "proxy-authorization", "x-csrftoken"]	Header names (case-insensitive) stored as "[REDACTED]" instead of their real value when CAPTURE_HEADERS is on.
CAPTURE_BODY	bool	False	When True, store request/response bodies on APIRequestLog. Independent of CAPTURE_HEADERS — bodies are higher-sensitivity and higher-volume. Binary content types are recorded as "[binary omitted]". Streaming responses are skipped.
MAX_BODY_BYTES	int	8192	Captured bodies are truncated past this size.
REDACTED_BODY_FIELDS	list[str]	["password", "token", "access_token", "refresh_token", "secret", "api_key", "card_number", "cvv", "cvv2", "ssn", "pin"]	JSON field names (case-insensitive, checked recursively) replaced with "[REDACTED]" when a captured body parses as JSON. Non-JSON bodies are captured as truncated raw text with no field-level redaction.

Report email

Key	Type	Default	Description
EMAIL_ENABLED	bool	False	Opt in to report emailing.
EMAIL_HOST	str	""	Falls back to the project's EMAIL_HOST setting if blank.
EMAIL_PORT	int	587
EMAIL_HOST_USER	str	""	Falls back to the project's EMAIL_HOST_USER setting if blank.
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD	str	""	Falls back to the project's EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD setting if blank.
EMAIL_USE_TLS	bool	True
EMAIL_USE_SSL	bool	False
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL	str	""	Falls back to the project's DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL, then EMAIL_HOST_USER, if blank.

Full resolution order and behavior on misconfiguration: Emailing reports.

System checks

manage.py check validates PERFORMANCE_MONITOR if it's present in settings: ENABLED, SAMPLING_RATE, SLOW_REQUEST_THRESHOLD_MS, EXCLUDED_PATHS, RETENTION_DAYS_RAW, RETENTION_DAYS_RESOURCES, QUEUE_NAME, USER_ID_SALT and SERVICES are required keys with type checks (performance.E001/E002); SAMPLING_RATE must be between 0.0 and 1.0 (performance.E003); each SERVICES entry needs a valid type (performance.E005) and non-empty name (performance.E006).