﻿---
title: Agent processors
description: Elastic Agent processors are lightweight processing components that you can use to parse, filter, transform, and enrich data at the source. For example,...
url: https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/5279/reference/fleet/agent-processors
products:
  - Elastic Agent
  - Fleet
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Generally available
  - Elastic Stack: Generally available
---

# Agent processors
Elastic Agent processors are lightweight processing components that you can use to parse, filter, transform, and enrich data at the source. For example, you can use processors to:
- reduce the number of exported fields
- enhance events with additional metadata
- perform additional processing and decoding
- sanitize data

Each processor receives an event, applies a defined action to the event, and returns the event. If you define a list of processors, they are executed in the order they are defined.
```yaml
event -> processor 1 -> event1 -> processor 2 -> event2 ...
```

<note>
  Elastic Agent processors execute *before* ingest pipelines, which means that your processor configurations cannot refer to fields that are created by ingest pipelines or Logstash. For more limitations, refer to [What are some limitations of using processors?](#limitations)
</note>


## Where are processors valid?

The processors described in this section are valid:
- **Under integration settings in the Integrations UI in Kibana**. For example, when configuring an Nginx integration, you can define processors for a specific dataset under **Advanced options**. The processor in this example adds geo metadata to the Nginx access logs collected by Elastic Agent:
  ![Screen showing how to add a processor to an integration policy](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/5279/reference/fleet/images/add-processor.png)
  <note>
  Some integrations do not currently support processors.
  </note>
- **Under input configuration settings for standalone Elastic Agents**. For example:
  ```yaml
  inputs:
    - type: logfile
      use_output: default
      data_stream:
        namespace: default
      streams:
        - data_stream:
            dataset: nginx.access
            type: logs
          ignore_older: 72h
          paths:
            - /var/log/nginx/access.log*
          tags:
            - nginx-access
          exclude_files:
            - .gz$
          processors:
            - add_host_metadata:
                cache.ttl: 5m
                geo:
                  name: nyc-dc1-rack1
                  location: '40.7128, -74.0060'
                  continent_name: North America
                  country_iso_code: US
                  region_name: New York
                  region_iso_code: NY
                  city_name: New York
            - add_locale: null
  ```

You can define processors that apply to a specific input defined in the configuration. Applying a processor to all the inputs on a global basis is currently not supported.

## What are some limitations of using processors?

Processors have the following limitations.
- Cannot enrich events with data from Elasticsearch or other custom data sources.
- Cannot process data after it’s been converted to the Elastic Common Schema (ECS) because the conversion is performed by Elasticsearch ingest pipelines. This means that your processor configuration cannot refer to fields that are created by ingest pipelines or Logstash because those fields are created *after* the processor runs, not before.
- May break integration ingest pipelines in Elasticsearch if the user-defined processing removes or alters fields expected by ingest pipelines.
- If you create new fields using processors, you are responsible for setting up field mappings in the `*-@custom` component template and making sure the new mappings are aligned with ECS.


## What other options are available for processing data?

The Elastic Stack provides several options for processing data collected by Elastic Agent. The option you choose depends on what you need to do:

| If you need to…                                                    | Do this…                                                                                                                                       |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Sanitize or enrich raw data at the source                          | Use an Elastic Agent processor                                                                                                                 |
| Convert data to ECS, normalize field data, or enrich incoming data | Use [ingest pipelines](/elastic/docs-content/pull/5279/manage-data/ingest/transform-enrich/ingest-pipelines#pipelines-for-fleet-elastic-agent) |
| Define or alter the schema at query time                           | Use [runtime fields](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/5279/manage-data/data-store/mapping/runtime-fields)         |
| Do something else with your data                                   | Use [Logstash plugins](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/logstash-docs-md/tree/main/lsr/filter-plugins)                              |


## How are Elastic Agent processors different from Logstash plugins or ingest pipelines?

Logstash plugins and ingest pipelines both require you to send data to another system for processing. Processors, on the other hand, allow you to apply processing logic at the source. This means that you can filter out data you don’t want to send across the connection, and you can spread some of the processing load across host systems running on edge nodes.