diff --git a/tests/runner/src/env.rs b/tests/runner/src/env.rs
index 3432b80840..77a8e703f2 100644
--- a/tests/runner/src/env.rs
+++ b/tests/runner/src/env.rs
@@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ impl Env {
     }
 
     async fn start_standalone(&self, id: usize) -> GreptimeDB {
-        println!("Starting standalone instance {id}");
+        println!("Starting standalone instance id: {id}");
 
         if self.server_addrs.server_addr.is_some() {
             self.connect_db(&self.server_addrs, id).await
diff --git a/tests/runner/src/main.rs b/tests/runner/src/main.rs
index d2c0d7bdaf..14eb9f9654 100644
--- a/tests/runner/src/main.rs
+++ b/tests/runner/src/main.rs
@@ -153,9 +153,10 @@ async fn main() {
         || args.setup_pg
         || args.setup_mysql
         || args.kafka_wal_broker_endpoints.is_some()
+        || args.test_filter != ".*"
     {
         args.jobs = 1;
-        println!("Normalizing parallelism to 1 due to server addresses or etcd/pg/mysql setup");
+        println!("Normalizing parallelism to 1 due to server addresses, etcd/pg/mysql setup, or test filter usage");
     }
 
     let config = ConfigBuilder::default()