Open source alternatives to Google Analytics

By GitHub stars it is PostHog, with 40,775 stars and a commit on 14 Nov. Choose PostHog when you build a software product and want analytics with session replay and feature flags; its cloud is free up to 1M events a month. Next come Plausible Analytics (29,843 stars) and Matomo (22,027 stars).

Yes. The code of all 3 is public under MIT, AGPL 3.0 or GPL 3.0 or later, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

Start from the job you use Google Analytics for. Choose Plausible Analytics when you want a simple dashboard without cookies; the cloud starts at $9 a month for 10,000 pageviews, or you can self-host it free. Choose Matomo when you want Google Analytics-style depth on servers you control; self-hosting is free and Matomo Cloud starts at $26 a month.

All 3: PostHog, Plausible Analytics and Matomo. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

All 3 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them PostHog, Plausible Analytics and Matomo. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

MIT (1), AGPL 3.0 (1), GPL 3.0 or later (1). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely. GPL and AGPL ask you to share your changes under the same licence when you give the software to others, and AGPL also counts letting people use it over a network.

The hosting. Google Analytics's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.