  We introduce a spectrum of monotone coarse invariants for metric measure
spaces called Poincar\'{e} profiles. The two extremes of this spectrum
determine the growth of the space, and the separation profile as defined by
Benjamini--Schramm--Tim\'{a}r. In this paper we focus on properties of the
Poincar\'{e} profiles of groups with polynomial growth, and of hyperbolic
spaces, where we deduce a connection between these profiles and conformal
dimension. As applications, we use these invariants to show the non-existence
of coarse embeddings in a variety of examples.
