 After her commissioning, she was assigned to serve as a flotilla leader for torpedo boats. She participated in only one major action, Operation Albion, in October 1917. There, she shelled Russian gun batteries and troop positions and engaged Russian destroyers and gunboats. The ship also led a successful, albeit minor, operation against British shipping in the North Sea in December 1917. After the end of the war, she was interned with the rest of the German fleet in Scapa Flow. On 21 June 1919, the interned fleet scuttled itself, though Emden was run aground by British ships before she could sink completely. Ceded to France in the Treaty of Versailles, she was too badly damaged by the attempted scuttling and beaching to see service with the French Navy, so was instead used as a target after 1922, and broken up for scrap in 1926.
