Follow AWS Lambda Logs on a CLI

How to pipe all of your Lambda output to a terminal for faster debugging.

January 31, 2025

AWSLambdaCloudWatchCLI

Logs are stored in Cloud Watch against individual resources. Each resource will have its own set of logs. To see the Lambda resources you can run:

bash

aws logs describe-log-groups --log-group-name-prefix "/aws/lambda/" --profile <your-profile-if-applicable>

This will give you some output like the following:

bash

"logGroups": [
        {
            "logGroupName": "/aws/lambda/SomeStackName-HelloHandler2E4FBA4D-9tI",
            "creationTime": 1736804429554,
            "metricFilterCount": 0,
            "arn": "arn:aws:logs:eu-west-2:012839728923:log-group:/aws/lambda/SomeStackName-HelloHandler2E4FBA4D-9tI:*",
            "storedBytes": 1504,
            "logGroupClass": "STANDARD",
            "logGroupArn": "arn:aws:logs:eu-west-2:012839728923:log-group:/aws/lambda/SomeStackName-HelloHandler2E4FBA4D-9tI"
        },
        ...
]

Look at the logGroupName for the name of the function that you want to follow, then run this command:

bash

aws logs tail "/aws/lambda/<logGroupName>" --follow --profile <your-profile-if-applicable>

It’s also possible to find the function's name through the online interface if you’re struggling.