Output Logs in Docker Compose

The short answer

In Docker Compose, to output the logs of all the containers related to all the services defined in your compose.yaml  file at once, you can use the docker compose logs  command without arguments:

 $ docker compose logs

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For example, considering the following compose.yaml file:

 version: '3'

services:
  website:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
  api:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"

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This command will output all the logs of both the website  and api services:

 $ docker compose logs
website-1 | [INFO] Starting website server …
api-1 | [INFO] Starting api server …
website-1 | [INFO] New client login attempt 
api-1 | [ERROR] Credentials not found

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Viewing the logs of a specific service

To output the logs of one or more specific services, you can use the docker compose logs command as follows:

 $ docker compose logs <service_name …>

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Where service_name …  is a list of service names separated by a space character.

For example, this command will only output the logs of the containers related to the api  service:

 $ docker compose logs api
api-1 | [INFO] Starting api server …
api-1 | [ERROR] Credentials not found

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You can learn more about container logs by reading our article on how to monitor the logs of single containers in Docker.

Customizing the logs output

To output the logs of containers without including the name of their related services, which helps making the output cleaner and easier to parse, you can use the --no-log-prefix  flag:

 $ docker compose logs --no-log-prefix [<service_name> …]

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For example, this command will only output the logs generated by the containers without the names of the related services:

 $ docker compose logs --no-log-prefix
[INFO] Starting website server …
[INFO] Starting api server …
[INFO] New client login attempt 
[ERROR] Credentials not found

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Including the logs timestamp in the output

To output the logs of containers including the timestamp at which they were generated, you can use the -t  flag (short for --timestamps ):

 $ docker compose logs -t [<service_name> …]

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For example, this command will include the timestamp of every single log line:

 $ docker compose logs -t
website-1 | 2024-02-23T13:40:41.928346630Z  [INFO] Starting website server …
api-1 | 2024-02-23T13:41:32.628446430Z [INFO] Starting api server …
website-1 | 2024-02-23T14:12:20.928346630Z [INFO] New client login attempt 
api-1 | 2024-02-23T14:13:30.928346630Z [ERROR] Credentials not found

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Displaying service logs in real-time

To monitor the logs of the containers related to one or more services in real-time, you can use the docker compose logs  command with the -f  flag (short for --follow) :

 $ docker compose logs -f [<service_name …>]

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Note that this command will not only output the new logs generated by the containers in real-time, but also the previous ones. You can learn more about filtering these logs in the following sections.

Easily retrieve this command using Warp’s AI Command Suggestions

If you’re using Warp as your terminal, you can easily retrieve this command using the Warp AI Command Suggestions feature:

For example, entering docker compose logs real-time  in the AI Command Suggestions will prompt a docker  command that can then quickly be inserted into your shell by doing CMD+ENTER .

Filtering container logs

In Docker Compose, container logs can be filtered in several ways.

Outputting the last N logs

To show the latest log entries, you can use the -n  flag (short for --tail ) followed by the number of logs to display:

 $ docker compose logs -n <number> [<service_name …>]

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For example, the following command shows the latest 80 logs of the containers related to the api service:

 $ docker compose logs -n 80 api

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Filtering logs by date and time

To filter container logs based on timeframes, you can either use the --since  flag to fetch the logs that occurred after a specific time:

 $ docker compose logs --since <time> [<service_name …>]

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Or you can use the --until  flag to fetch the logs that occurred before a specific time:

 $ docker compose logs --until <time> [<service_name …>]

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Where time  is either:

• A timestamp expressed in the following format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.NNNNNNZ .
• A relative duration expressed in the following format: <number>[h|m|s]  where h , m , s  stand for hours, minutes, and seconds.

For example, this command will output all the logs generated in the last hour:

 $ docker compose logs --since="1h"

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And this command will output all the logs generated until January 2nd, 2024:

 $ docker compose logs --until="2024-01-02"

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Filtering logs based on patterns using the grep command

To filter container logs based on specific keywords or patterns, you can pipe the output of the docker compose logs  command into the grep  command as follows:

 $ docker compose logs [<service_name …>] | grep '<pattern>'

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For instance, this command will output all the logs of the containers related to the api  service containing the ERROR keyword:

 $ docker compose logs api | grep 'ERROR'
api-1 | [ERROR] Credentials not found

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You can learn more filtering methods by reading our article on how to filter the output of commands with grep and awk.