Ask HN: Any good open source alternatives to Google Analytics? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

Google Analytics seems super complicated...looking for better alternatives.

It has less features, but Plausible[1] is pretty good at basics.

I use it on my commercial website and I'm happy with it. It's not nearly as full-featured as GA, but it gets the job done in a privacy-friendly way. Getting rid of the cookie banner is a major UX boost.

With everything I have to manage in my infra, clickhouse is another db I don't want to add to the list of moving parts, so I settled with Umami, which uses postgres, which I already use for most of my projects.

ClickHouse is a simple and solid tool - you install it, it works, and it does not require attention. It is probably the less problematic data storage dependency. Works well in embedded scenarios.

I like that plausible is cookie-less, meaning no gdpr cookie banner. I also like that it obeys ad-blockers by default which lets people easily subscribe to their own privacy settings.

Note that "Doesn't use cookies" != "Doesn't require a cookie banner" (the opposite also isn't true). The tool just doesn't collect any PII. IIRC, it can even add a session cookie that just tells it "This user was on the page before", making the analytics more useful without personally identifying users and thus still not requiring a cookie banner.

What does this mean? Can you elaborate? (Appreciate if ELI5)

Privacy-First is not the same as compliant with GDPR. You will find many tools being privacy focused, but not necessarily compliant. But that aside, there is a matter of consent.

So if you want to skip the so-called Cookie Banner, you have to assure that:

1. you have a legitimate interest,

2. no data leaves adequate country/jurisdiction (until recently that meant no US data transfer),

3. privacy policy documents exactly what happens with the data,

4. ... and a few other points.

Cookie Banner is just a common term for consent.

https://wideangle.co/blog/what-is-consent-under-gdpr

Thanks a lot!

Matomo is open source. They have a comparison with Google Analytics: https://matomo.org/matomo-vs-google-analytics-comparison/

Do you know if you can track which network (domain network like corporate network) the users are from. This was a cool feature which was in Google Analytics but in GA4 is gone and we're looking for alternatives.

you can't . It does not give you accurate details anyway even GA used to have lot of false positives i.e. it would show traffic from amazon where really amazon was getting used as corp proxy.

Just started testing them out last week. Amazing how much better it is than GA4.

Just comparing them with Plausible & Pirsch Analytics!

Pirsch analytics is a great one https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch

Thanks! Definitely looks promising.

Not open source but I'd highly recommend: https://usefathom.com/

Their Fathom Lite is open source https://github.com/usefathom/fathom

it is not seeing any development i feel umami/pirsch is better alternative. umami is mit licensed.

Thanks a ton! Love this community :)

I’m looking for even a good free or nearly alternative!

I’ve clients, myself included, that just want to know how much traffic we get and where from if possible.

Is that too much to ask!?

Google have lost the plot and assume the entire world is obsessed with customer journey metrics and tracking very single micro action on a website or App.

Gawd. GA4 is just kinda annoying and too try hard.

Here are some of the (nearly free) and free alternatives umami.is (open source MIT) ackee.electerious.com (opensource MIT) pirsch.io (open source AGPL3) plausible.io (open source AGPL3) usefathom.com (lite is open source) simpleanalytics.com splitbee.io

i have developed one for myself as well.

Thanks, I'll check those out! :-)

Countly is an open source alternative. Here is comparison with Google Analytics: https://countly.com/google-analytics-alternative

I am trying to build something different: a self-hosted premium (as in paid) analytics platform [0].

[0]: https://uxwizz.com

I like this, just tried your demo and looked at your roadmap. Would love to talk more if you have time this week about it. I've used all the major systems so I can prob point you to a few features not on your roadmap.

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

You can reach me out on Twitter @XCSme or send an email at support [at] uxwizz.com, I am always happy to get feedback and discuss ideas.

Currently, there are a lot more features planned than I have time to implement and I am also trying to keep the product from getting bloated. I tend to prioritize improving existing features over adding new ones.

Some must-have that are planned are: API (to store or access the stored data), webhooks and more tools to help with self-hosting (Docker images, dashboard access logs, provide or integrate performance metrics, alerts, etc.). The plan is to make the platform a one-click set-and-forget installation, where nothing should break over time, and, in the rare case it does, you get notified.

I would suggest you take a look at Wide Angle Analytics https://wideangle.co

(disclaimer: our product)

It is paid, but we offer free accounts for selected FOSS projects :)

I wrote about Plausible Analytics (popular GA alternative) a little while ago <https://medium.com/scoutflo/the-google-analytics-alternative...>

It's open source!

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