head to head · open source
goaccess vs lotus
goaccess has 20,932 GitHub stars, 1,193 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lotus has 1,837 stars, 134 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. goaccess leads on adoption by 1,039% (20,932 vs 1,837 stars). goaccess is written in C under MIT; lotus is written in Python under MIT. goaccess has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, lotus 7%. goaccess was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | lotus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 134 |
| 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 lotus if
- You want the lotus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and lotus 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 lotus
Lotus: Pricing & Packaging Infrastructure For Any Business Model Usage Based, Per Seat, Bespoke Enterprise Plans And More Documentation • Lotus is a pricing and billing engine that enables SaaS companies to deploy, monitor, and experiment with custom subscriptions and complex models like usage based pricing. Lotus provides a flexible and modular control panel on top of your existing quote to cash stack that allows you to integrate data from multiple systems to help you figure out the optimal pricing scheme for your products. Getting Started :bust in silhouette: Self Hosted Version (currently the only version…
read the full lotus 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 lotus more popular?
goaccess has 20,932 GitHub stars and lotus has 1,837. goaccess has the larger community by that measure.
Are goaccess and lotus free?
Both are open source. goaccess is licensed under MIT and lotus under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between goaccess and lotus?
goaccess is written in C and lotus in Python. 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 lotus?
Choose goaccess if you want the larger community (20,932 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lotus if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.