head to head · open source
Uptime Kuma vs stern
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars, 8,426 forks, 805 open issues and last shipped yesterday. stern has 4,862 stars, 178 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Uptime Kuma leads on adoption by 1,781% (91,477 vs 4,862 stars). Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript under MIT; stern is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Uptime Kuma has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, stern 4%. Uptime Kuma was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Uptime Kuma | stern | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 178 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Uptime Kuma if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick stern if
- You want the stern feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and stern fits your workflow better
About Uptime Kuma
Uptime Kuma is a free, MIT licensed, self hosted monitoring tool with a reactive web dashboard, built for operators and teams that want to watch their own HTTP, TCP, and DNS endpoints and keep the resulting data on their own infrastructure.
read the full Uptime Kuma overview →
About stern
Stern is a command line tool that tails logs from multiple Kubernetes pods and multiple containers at the same time, colour coding each result, and it is built for developers and operators who debug workloads on Kubernetes instead of reading pods one at a time.
read the full stern overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Uptime Kuma or stern more popular?
Uptime Kuma has 91,477 GitHub stars and stern has 4,862. Uptime Kuma has the larger community by that measure.
Are Uptime Kuma and stern free?
Both are open source. Uptime Kuma is licensed under MIT and stern under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Uptime Kuma and stern?
Uptime Kuma is written in JavaScript and stern in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Uptime Kuma or stern?
Choose Uptime Kuma if you want the larger community (91,477 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose stern if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.