What is Somo used for?

Somo is a human-friendly command-line replacement for netstat that lists sockets and ports in a readable table, with filtering, sorting, and process killing. It is a good fit for finding what is using a port and scripting port checks with JSON output.

Yes. Somo is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at theopfr/somo and is written mainly in Rust.

Yes. Somo is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is Somo an alternative to?

Somo is an open-source alternative to Socket and LINE. Other open-source alternatives to Socket include Grype and Trivy.

Is Somo actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Somo was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.4.0, published on 12 September 2026. The project has 2.6k stars on GitHub.

Somo: open-source alternative to Socket, LINE

About Somo

Somo is a Rust command-line tool for monitoring sockets and ports on Linux and macOS, designed as a friendlier alternative to netstat. Output is shown as an easy-to-read table that can be filtered and sorted, and it can also be produced as JSON or in a custom format. It is released under the MIT license.

The README highlights that a common command such as netstat -tulpn can be replaced by a shorter somo -l. It also allows interactively killing processes that hold a port, which is handy when a development server is stuck. Most of the time it should be run with elevated privileges so it can see all processes and ports.

It installs with cargo from crates.io, and the project notes that the master branch may contain unreleased features, so the crates.io page is the reference for the stable version. Somo suits developers and system administrators who regularly check which processes are listening on which ports.

Key features

Readable table view of sockets and ports
Filtering and sorting of results
Interactive process killing
JSON and custom output formats
Linux and macOS support
Shorter commands than netstat

Good fit for

→Finding what is using a port
→Scripting port checks with JSON output

Built with: Rust
Tags: netstat; networking; cli; rust; ports; sockets; monitoring; sysadmin

Somo: questions and answers

What is Somo used for?: Somo is a human-friendly command-line replacement for netstat that lists sockets and ports in a readable table, with filtering, sorting, and process killing. It is a good fit for finding what is using a port and scripting port checks with JSON output.
Is Somo open source?: Yes. Somo is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at theopfr/somo and is written mainly in Rust.
Is Somo free?: Yes. Somo is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is Somo an alternative to?: Somo is an open-source alternative to Socket and LINE. Other open-source alternatives to Socket include Grype and Trivy.
Is Somo actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Somo was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.4.0, published on 12 September 2026. The project has 2.6k stars on GitHub.