head to head · open source
Countly vs OpenWebAnalytics
Countly has 5,905 GitHub stars, 981 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OpenWebAnalytics has 2,689 stars, 488 forks, 115 open issues and last shipped today. Countly leads on adoption by 120% (5,905 vs 2,689 stars). Countly is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence; OpenWebAnalytics is written in PHP under GPL-2.0. Countly has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, OpenWebAnalytics 18%. OpenWebAnalytics was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Countly | OpenWebAnalytics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.9K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 981 | ⑂ 488 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Countly if
- You weight community size — 5.9K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenWebAnalytics if
- You want the OpenWebAnalytics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and OpenWebAnalytics fits your workflow better
About Countly
Countly is a privacy first, AI ready analytics and customer engagement platform that organizations deploy themselves rather than consume only as a hosted service. The server side component lives in this repository and is written in JavaScript, sitting in the JavaScript and Node.js ecosystem alongside the client SDKs that ship separately for iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, NodeJS, Unity, Java and JavaScript. The platform is built around the idea that customer data should stay under the operator's control: Countly runs on premises or in a private cloud, and the project describes full data ownership, deployment…
read the full Countly overview →
About OpenWebAnalytics
Open Web Analytics is an open source web analytics server written in PHP and released under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later. It ships the OWA Server together with a first party JavaScript tracking client that can be added to web pages, and it is positioned by its maintainers as an alternative to commercial analytics tools such as Google Analytics. The project lives in the PHP ecosystem and is distributed through its GitHub repository, with a WordPress integration plugin and a PHP SDK maintained alongside it for sites and applications that want tracking wired in without hand rolling the client.…
read the full OpenWebAnalytics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Countly or OpenWebAnalytics more popular?
Countly has 5,905 GitHub stars and OpenWebAnalytics has 2,689. Countly has the larger community by that measure.
Are Countly and OpenWebAnalytics free?
Both are open source. Countly has no licence declared in this registry, and OpenWebAnalytics is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Countly and OpenWebAnalytics?
Countly is written in JavaScript and OpenWebAnalytics in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Countly or OpenWebAnalytics?
Choose Countly if you want the larger community (5,905 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose OpenWebAnalytics if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.