head to head · open source
goaccess vs preswald
goaccess has 20,932 GitHub stars, 1,193 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. preswald has 4,270 stars, 646 forks, 330 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. goaccess leads on adoption by 390% (20,932 vs 4,270 stars). goaccess is written in C under MIT; preswald is written in Python under Apache-2.0. goaccess has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, preswald 15%. 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.
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Side by side
| goaccess | preswald | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-06-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 646 |
| 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 preswald if
- You want the preswald feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and preswald 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 preswald
Preswald is an Apache 2.0 Python static site generator that packages interactive data apps — compute, data access, and UI — into self contained .html files that run entirely in the browser on a WebAssembly runtime built from Pyodide and DuckDB, aimed at analysts, data engineers, and developers who need to hand a working dashboard, report, or inspection tool to someone who will not install anything.
read the full preswald overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is goaccess or preswald more popular?
goaccess has 20,932 GitHub stars and preswald has 4,270. goaccess has the larger community by that measure.
Are goaccess and preswald free?
Both are open source. goaccess is licensed under MIT and preswald under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between goaccess and preswald?
goaccess is written in C and preswald 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 preswald?
Choose goaccess if you want the larger community (20,932 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose preswald if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.