diff --git a/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo.go b/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo.go
index 6b301196..8ad9d15e 100644
--- a/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo.go
+++ b/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo.go
@@ -125,7 +125,7 @@ func (r *Retriever) updateMetrics(res *Response) {
 	r.versionMetric.WithLabelValues(
 		res.ClusterName,
 		res.ClusterUUID,
-		res.Version.BuildDate.String(),
+		res.Version.BuildDate,
 		res.Version.BuildHash,
 		res.Version.Number.String(),
 		res.Version.LuceneVersion.String(),
diff --git a/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo_response.go b/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo_response.go
index c26a99fd..f484d16d 100644
--- a/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo_response.go
+++ b/pkg/clusterinfo/clusterinfo_response.go
@@ -2,7 +2,6 @@ package clusterinfo
 
 import (
 	"github.com/blang/semver"
-	"time"
 )
 
 // Response is the cluster info retrievable from the / endpoint
@@ -18,7 +17,7 @@ type Response struct {
 type VersionInfo struct {
 	Number        semver.Version `json:"number"`
 	BuildHash     string         `json:"build_hash"`
-	BuildDate     time.Time      `json:"build_date"`
+	BuildDate     string         `json:"build_date"`
 	BuildSnapshot bool           `json:"build_snapshot"`
 	LuceneVersion semver.Version `json:"lucene_version"`
 }