GoatCounter
Web analytics that counts pages and visits without tracking people, hosted for free or run yourself.
Instead of Google Analytics
The visitor counter at the bottom of a page was a fixture of the 1990s web, and it turns out to be a fair model for what most site owners want to know. GoatCounter takes that idea seriously, and this site uses it for its own counts and for the number in its footer, so weigh this review with that in mind. Its README calls it an open source web analytics platform, available as a free hosted service or as a self-hosted app, and says the script adds about 3.5 KB to a page.
GoatCounter scores a 5 on footprint and a 4 on lock-in, self-direction, power, longevity and delivery. Self-hosting is a statically compiled binary that contains everything you need, with a SQLite file or a PostgreSQL connection as the only dependency, and the README says it can be self-hosted without restrictions. It says it does not track users with unique identifiers and recognises repeat visits without cookies by using a non-identifiable hash. That is the project's own claim, and we have used it only on this site and have not audited it.
On our own account the settings let us switch off individual page views, browser, system, region, language and screen size, and we turned those off, so the privacy page can say plainly what is left. The repository belongs to a personal account and the page does not say who else maintains it, so Longevity and Power rest on the code being open and the data being a file you can keep. The README asks readers to contribute financially, and the page we read does not name the licence, only a link to its LICENSE file.
Living with it means pasting one line into your pages and checking a short table of which pages were read and where people came from. Scores are our reading of public sources, and our own use of it is the reason to read this one with care.
- Open source analytics, hosted free or run as one binary with SQLite or PostgreSQL
- The script adds about 3.5 KB, and the project says it uses no cookies
- This site uses it, and the page we read does not name the licence
What stands out
Do you make GoatCounter? Get the badge for your site
This badge reports a dated review. It is not a certification and it costs nothing. Link it to this page and leave the numbers alone: the image always shows the current score.
For dark backgrounds, use goatcounter-dark.svg in place of goatcounter-light.svg.
Side by side. Google Analytics vs GoatCounter
For comparison, we also reviewed Google Analytics (12/30) as a benchmark.