What is Telescope used for?

Telescope is a self-hosted, web-based log viewer that queries logs from ClickHouse, StarRocks, Docker and Kubernetes through one search interface. It is a good fit for searching ClickHouse-stored application logs and reading container logs during local development.

Is Telescope open source?

Yes. Telescope is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at iamtelescope/telescope and is written mainly in Python.

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

Can I self-host Telescope?

Yes. Telescope can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is Telescope an alternative to?

Telescope is an open-source alternative to Papertrail, Loggly and Logz.io. Other open-source alternatives to Papertrail include HyperDX, SigNoz and OpenObserve.

Is Telescope actively maintained?

The most recent commit to Telescope was on 8 May 2026, and the latest release is v0.0.27, published on 8 May 2026. The project has 711 stars on GitHub.

Telescope: open-source alternative to Papertrail, Loggly

About Telescope

Telescope is an MIT-licensed web application for exploring log data. It gives developers and operations teams a single interface for searching logs that live in different places, including ClickHouse and StarRocks databases, Docker container logs read through the Docker API, and Kubernetes pod logs.

Administrators create and manage source connections, choose which fields are used, suggested, hidden or autocompleted, and control which users and groups can access each source. A data explorer adds dynamic visualizations alongside filtering and search, giving the same querying experience across all source types. ClickHouse and StarRocks serve as the main backends for structured log storage, while Docker and Kubernetes sources suit local development, ephemeral environments and cloud-native setups.

The backend is written in Python with Django and the front end uses Vue. It can be run locally with Docker, and a live demo instance with GitHub login is available for trying the end-user features. The project is at an early version number, so expect frequent change.

Key features

Unified log search across ClickHouse, StarRocks, Docker, Kubernetes
Source management with per-user and group permissions
Configurable field visibility and autocompletion
Data explorer with dynamic visualizations
Docker container log access via the Docker API
Kubernetes pod log retrieval

Good fit for

→Searching ClickHouse-stored application logs
→Reading container logs during local development

Built with: Python; ClickHouse; Django; Vue; Docker; Kubernetes
Tags: log-viewer; logs; clickhouse; observability; kubernetes; docker; self-hosted; django

Telescope: questions and answers

What is Telescope used for?: Telescope is a self-hosted, web-based log viewer that queries logs from ClickHouse, StarRocks, Docker and Kubernetes through one search interface. It is a good fit for searching ClickHouse-stored application logs and reading container logs during local development.
Is Telescope open source?: Yes. Telescope is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at iamtelescope/telescope and is written mainly in Python.
Is Telescope free?: Yes. Telescope is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Telescope?: Yes. Telescope can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is Telescope an alternative to?: Telescope is an open-source alternative to Papertrail, Loggly and Logz.io. Other open-source alternatives to Papertrail include HyperDX, SigNoz and OpenObserve.
Is Telescope actively maintained?: The most recent commit to Telescope was on 8 May 2026, and the latest release is v0.0.27, published on 8 May 2026. The project has 711 stars on GitHub.