GoatCounter

An easy, privacy-friendly web analytics platform, free as a hosted service or as a self-hosted Go app, as an alternative to Google Analytics or Matomo.

6.1k stars, 285 forks Go On GitHub since May 2019

Visit website View on GitHub How to run it

What is GoatCounter?

GoatCounter counts page views and shows meaningful statistics without tracking personal data: pages, referrers, browsers, systems, screen sizes and locations. It works with a tiny script, a pixel, or by importing server logs. You can use the free hosted service at goatcounter.com, or run the single Go binary yourself with SQLite or PostgreSQL. GoatCounter's interface has 23 translations.

Good fit if

  • You run a personal site or small project and want honest, simple stats.
  • You want a self-hosted counter that needs almost no resources.

Look elsewhere if

Before you adopt it

GoatCounter is EUPL-1.2, a copyleft license created by the European Commission and approved by the OSI. It is mostly the work of its creator, Martin Tournoij, and development is calm.

Drafted with AI from the project's README and repository data, then checked against that data on 30 October 2026. Report a correction

GoatCounter health: is it still maintained?

56 of 100, actively developed

  • Activity
    21 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 27 September 2026.
    16 / 30
  • Contributors
    5 people wrote the 21 commits of the last 90 days; the most active wrote 62% of them.
    10 / 20
  • Releases
    1 release in the last 12 months; the latest, v2.7.0, on 15 December 2025.
    7 / 20
  • Replies to issues
    Maintainers answered 70% of recent issues, with a median first reply after 1 hour.
    18 / 20
  • Security practices
    No OpenSSF Scorecard for this repository yet, so this part gets a neutral score.
    5 / 10

Read from GitHub on 1 November 2026. How the score works

GoatCounter license: is it open source?

GoatCounter uses EUPL, an open-source license approved by the OSI.

  1. May 2019First published on GitHub.
  2. TodayEUPL.

How to run GoatCounter yourself

Docker
Dockerfile or compose file in the repository
Compose file
compose.yaml: 3 services (postgres)
Setup effort
2 of 5, judged from the compose file
Kubernetes
No Helm chart in the repository
Desktop and mobile
Builds for Linux, including ARM in GitHub releases
Interface languages
23 languages

Install instructions: goatcounter.com or the README on GitHub.

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Questions about GoatCounter

Is GoatCounter open source?

Yes. GoatCounter is published under EUPL, an OSI-approved open-source license.

Is GoatCounter still maintained?

Its health score is 56 of 100 (actively developed). It had 21 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 27 September 2026, and its latest release came out on 15 December 2025.

How do I run GoatCounter?

You can run it with Docker, as an app for Linux, including ARM. The README on GitHub has the exact steps.

What are the alternatives to GoatCounter?

Close alternatives in the Web analytics category include Matomo, PostHog, Umami.