head to head · open source
Countly vs shynet
Countly has 5,905 GitHub stars, 981 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. shynet has 3,156 stars, 208 forks, 63 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Countly leads on adoption by 87% (5,905 vs 3,156 stars). Countly is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence; shynet is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Countly has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, shynet 7%. Countly 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
| Countly | shynet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.9K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-03-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 981 | ⑂ 208 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Countly if
- You weight community size — 5.9K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick shynet if
- You want the shynet 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 shynet fits your workflow better
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 →
About shynet
Shynet is an open source web analytics application written in Python and built with Django. It lives in the self hosted web and product analytics ecosystem, where operators collect visit data on their own infrastructure instead of sending it to a third party service. The project is released under the Apache 2.0 license and aims to provide detailed analytics without cookies or required JavaScript.
read the full shynet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Countly or shynet more popular?
Countly has 5,905 GitHub stars and shynet has 3,156. Countly has the larger community by that measure.
Are Countly and shynet free?
Both are open source. Countly has no licence declared in this registry, and shynet is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Countly and shynet?
Countly is written in JavaScript and shynet 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, Countly or shynet?
Choose Countly if you want the larger community (5,905 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose shynet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.