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Stern

Multi-pod and container log tailing for Kubernetes

Developer Tools & Git ★ 4.9k stars Easy setup Apache-2.0

Stern is an open-source command-line tool that tails logs from multiple pods and containers in a Kubernetes cluster at once. It is used for debugging applications on self-hosted clusters.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Multi-pod log tailing
  • Color-coded output
  • Regex pod selection
  • Lightweight

Strengths

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (4.9k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go

Is Stern secure?

OSV.dev has no published security advisories for Stern's repository. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

Stern replaces

Self-hosted kubectl logs alternatives

Health badge

Maintain Stern? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 87 · excellent

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for Stern](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/stern-log-tail.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/stern-log-tail/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/stern-log-tail/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/stern-log-tail.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for Stern"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/stern-log-tail.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for Stern
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/stern-log-tail/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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