What is GoAccess used for?

GoAccess is a real-time web server log analyzer that shows traffic statistics in a terminal or a live HTML dashboard, built for sysadmins and DevOps engineers. It is a good fit for quick traffic analysis on a web server, troubleshooting slow or failing requests and cookie-free analytics from server logs.

Is GoAccess open source?

Yes. GoAccess is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at allinurl/goaccess and is written mainly in C.

Yes. GoAccess is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What is GoAccess an alternative to?

GoAccess is an open-source alternative to Google Analytics, StatCounter and Chartbeat. Other open-source alternatives to Google Analytics include Umami, Plausible and Matomo.

Is GoAccess actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to GoAccess was on 1 October 2026. The project has 21k stars on GitHub.

GoAccess: open-source alternative to Google Analytics

About GoAccess

GoAccess is an open-source tool that analyzes web server access logs as they are written and displays the results either in a terminal or in a live HTML report in your browser. It is aimed at system administrators, DevOps engineers and security professionals who want quick HTTP statistics and visual server reports without sending logs to an external service.

It needs very little configuration: you run it against an access log, choose the log format, and it parses the file and shows the stats. Terminal panels refresh about every 200 milliseconds and the HTML output updates every second. It can track application response time, helping spot slow requests, and works with common servers such as Nginx and Apache. Topics also reference privacy and GDPR, since the analysis runs on your own infrastructure.

GoAccess is written in C and licensed under MIT. Because it reads logs locally rather than using a tracking script, it appeals to people who want analytics without cookies or JavaScript on the client. It also serves as a quick way to monitor traffic, detect anomalies and troubleshoot issues on a server.

Key features

Real-time log parsing in the terminal
Live HTML dashboard output
Works with Nginx and Apache logs
Minimal configuration needed
Application response time tracking
Runs on Linux and other Unix-like systems

Good fit for

→Quick traffic analysis on a web server
→Troubleshooting slow or failing requests
→Cookie-free analytics from server logs

Built with: C
Tags: log-analyzer; web-analytics; nginx; apache; terminal; monitoring; privacy; devops; c-language

GoAccess: questions and answers

What is GoAccess used for?: GoAccess is a real-time web server log analyzer that shows traffic statistics in a terminal or a live HTML dashboard, built for sysadmins and DevOps engineers. It is a good fit for quick traffic analysis on a web server, troubleshooting slow or failing requests and cookie-free analytics from server logs.
Is GoAccess open source?: Yes. GoAccess is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at allinurl/goaccess and is written mainly in C.
Is GoAccess free?: Yes. GoAccess is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What is GoAccess an alternative to?: GoAccess is an open-source alternative to Google Analytics, StatCounter and Chartbeat. Other open-source alternatives to Google Analytics include Umami, Plausible and Matomo.
Is GoAccess actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to GoAccess was on 1 October 2026. The project has 21k stars on GitHub.