SFR–M_⋆ relation for VUDS star-forming galaxies per redshift bins from z ~ 0.5 to z ~ 5. In each panel coloured data points represent individual galaxies, while contours show the density of galaxies. VUDS galaxies with redshifts ~100% reliable (flags 3 and 4, see Le Fèvre et al. 2014) are plotted with filled (coloured) heavy symbols, while galaxies with redshifts ~70−75% reliable (flag 2) are indicated with light grey open symbols. The black squares in each panel represent the median SFR in increasing mass bins obtained from the individual galaxies. The main sequence observed locally by the SDSS (Peng et al. 2010) and at z ~ 1 by Elbaz et al. (2007) is indicated in the 0 <z< 0.7 panel by the dotted and dashed lines, respectively. At higher redshifts the contiguous line indicates the MS of Schreiber et al. (2015), including the high-mass turn-off observed in their study, and the Elbaz et al. (2007)z = 1 relation is added as the dashed line in the 0.7 <z< 1.5 panel. Horizontal dot-dashed lines in each panel indicate the limit in SFR above which our data are statistically complete, as imposed by the i_AB ≤ 25 limit of our sample.