head to head · open source
Matomo vs Countly
Matomo has 21,880 GitHub stars, 2,896 forks, 2,578 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Countly has 5,904 stars, 981 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Matomo leads on adoption by 271% (21,880 vs 5,904 stars). Matomo is written in PHP under GPL-3.0; Countly is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Matomo has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Countly 17%. Matomo 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
| Matomo | Countly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | PHP | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 981 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Matomo if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Countly if
- You want the Countly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Countly fits your workflow better
About Matomo
Matomo is an open source digital analytics platform for websites and apps, formerly known as Piwik. It lives in the PHP and MySQL web analytics ecosystem, and the provided description positions it as an open alternative to Google Analytics and Amplitude. The project lets an organization collect, visualise, and analyse visitor data from its own digital properties.
read the full Matomo overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Matomo or Countly more popular?
Matomo has 21,880 GitHub stars and Countly has 5,904. Matomo has the larger community by that measure.
Are Matomo and Countly free?
Both are open source. Matomo is licensed under GPL-3.0, and Countly has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Matomo and Countly?
Matomo is written in PHP and Countly 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, Matomo or Countly?
Choose Matomo if you want the larger community (21,880 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Countly if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.