head to head · open source
goaccess vs Ackee
goaccess has 20,932 GitHub stars, 1,193 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Ackee has 4,706 stars, 385 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goaccess leads on adoption by 345% (20,932 vs 4,706 stars). goaccess is written in C under MIT; Ackee is written in JavaScript under MIT. goaccess has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Ackee 8%. Ackee was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (analytics, google-analytics), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| goaccess | Ackee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | C | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 385 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick goaccess if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Ackee if
- You want the Ackee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Ackee fits your workflow better
About goaccess
GoAccess is an open source, real time web log analyzer and interactive viewer written in C and released under the MIT license. It parses web server logs and renders the results either in a terminal on nix systems or through a browser, updating every panel and metric every 200 milliseconds in the terminal output and every second in the HTML output. The project has been developed for roughly thirteen years and lives in the nix command line ecosystem, with a cluster of topics around analytics, Apache, Caddy, dashboards, and command line tooling.
read the full goaccess overview →
About Ackee
Ackee is a self hosted, Node.js and MongoDB web analytics tool for website owners who want traffic statistics without cookies, cookie banners or identifiable visitor tracking, and it is aimed at developers and small teams who do not need a full featured marketing analytics platform.
read the full Ackee overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Marketing & Customer Engagement projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Marketing & Customer Engagement field.
Frequently asked questions
Is goaccess or Ackee more popular?
goaccess has 20,932 GitHub stars and Ackee has 4,706. goaccess has the larger community by that measure.
Are goaccess and Ackee free?
Both are open source. goaccess is licensed under MIT and Ackee under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between goaccess and Ackee?
goaccess is written in C and Ackee in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, goaccess or Ackee?
Choose goaccess if you want the larger community (20,932 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Ackee if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.