head to head · open source
goaccess vs MailAccess
goaccess has 21,052 GitHub stars, 1,210 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped today. MailAccess has 1,612 stars, 143 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goaccess leads on adoption by 1,206% (21,052 vs 1,612 stars). goaccess is written in C under MIT; MailAccess is written in Python under MIT. goaccess has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, MailAccess 9%. goaccess 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
| goaccess | MailAccess | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 143 |
| 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 MailAccess if
- You want the MailAccess feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and MailAccess 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 MailAccess
MailAccess is a free, self hostable email OSINT platform, shipped on PyPI as mailaccess , that fans a single address out across breach databases, social networks, DNS records, and the open web and returns a unified exposure score, built for security researchers, OSINT analysts, and penetration testers working under authorization.
read the full MailAccess overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is goaccess or MailAccess more popular?
goaccess has 21,052 GitHub stars and MailAccess has 1,612. goaccess has the larger community by that measure.
Are goaccess and MailAccess free?
Both are open source. goaccess is licensed under MIT and MailAccess under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between goaccess and MailAccess?
goaccess is written in C and MailAccess 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 MailAccess?
Choose goaccess if you want the larger community (21,052 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose MailAccess if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.