Hi guys, I’ve been working on a self-hostable web analytics platform since the start of this year after being frustrated with Google Analytics and Plausible.

I’ve packed a bunch of cool web analytics features into Rybbit, but I’ve tried very hard to keep the interface simple to use,

https://github.com/rybbit-io/rybbit

Check it out!

    • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      Posthog makes it almost impossible to actually self-host since they try to push you onto the cloud as much as possible. They say that the self-hosted version only works well up until 100k events … which is insane since their cloud free tier is 1 million events. It’s actually the reason why I built Rybbit. I tried to self-host posthog on my server but it ran it up to 100% CPU on 8 cores and didn’t even work.

      Ok posthog rant done.

      The other main difference is that Posthog has like 10+ different products all in one. Their web analytics is good, but it’s just kind of bland (imo) because it’s not their main focus.

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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      16 days ago

      Its a docker compose deployment so should just work on any system with docker installed. Copy the docker compose file and env file if it has one, and run ‘docker compose up -d’ in that directory.

      It can collect analytics from multiple places.

  • StarkZarn@infosec.pubEnglish
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    17 days ago

    Glad to see you post this here. I’ve been experimenting with selfhosted analytics for a while now and have attempted your project here a couple times. The thing that kills me is the Clickhouse requirement. It makes it impossible to host on a lightweight VPS. Like why should my analytics platform require so much more compute than my simple static site? Am I missing something?

    • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      Clickhouse definitely takes a lot of resources! There’s unfortunately no way around that, though in my experience it runs fine on the cheapest Hetzner instances which are like $3-4 a month for 2GB of RAM. How lightweight is your VPS?

      And yea, you don’t need clickhouse for a simple static site. I chose clickhouse because it Postgres or MySQL does not scale well since the main site I personally use Rybbit for sends around 20 million events a month.

      It pains me to plug my competitors, but check out Umami or Goatcounter if you want a platform that uses postgres.

  • osprior@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    17 days ago

    Question is the self-hosted version less featured than the paid hosted version?

    This looks amazing btw.

    • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      17 days ago

      Only very slightly so. One of the reasons I created Rybbit is because platforms like plausible and fathom have much inferior self-hosted versions (very limited featureset and basically never updated). We have a comparison here

      • spacelord@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        16 days ago

        @Goldflag

        I appreciate the intent behind Rybbit, but I have to respectfully disagree with the “only very slightly so” characterization. Looking at your official comparison table, the self-hosted version is missing:

        • Pages View
        • Web Vitals
        • Email reports
        • Google Search Console integration
        • VPN/Crawler/ASN tracking
        • Google/GitHub OAuth
        • Email support

        That’s 7 significant features—which seems more than “very slightly” different.

        More importantly, this raises AGPL compliance questions. Under AGPLv3 Section 13, if users interact with modified AGPL software over a network (your cloud version), you’re required to make the complete corresponding source code available to those users. If these cloud-only features are integrated into the same AGPL-licensed codebase, withholding them from the public repo while running them as a network service appears to conflict with the license terms.

        There are really only two compliant scenarios here:

        1. These features exist in the public repo but are just marketed as “cloud-only” (in which case the comparison table’s misleading)
        2. These features are truly separate proprietary code that interfaces with Rybbit without being part of the AGPL-licensed work (which would require careful architectural separation)

        If it’s neither—if these are AGPL-covered features running in your cloud service but withheld from the repo—that’s exactly the “loophole” the AGPL was designed to close. The irony is that you criticized Plausible and Fathom for having “much inferior self-hosted versions,” yet this appears to be a similar approach.

        Could you clarify the licensing status of these cloud-only features? Are they in the public repo but disabled by default, or are they proprietary additions that don’t derive from the AGPL codebase?

        • ITGuyLevi@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          OAuth is one thing I hate to see locked behind a paywall; it’s one thing for the pretty, management-geared stuff (dashboards and charts) to be a paid feature, but not security.

        • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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          16 days ago

          Everything is in the repo and cloud features are just toggled off in the self-hosted build.

          • spacelord@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            16 days ago

            @Goldflag,

            Thanks for clarifying! Good to hear everything’s in the repo and that it’s truly AGPL compliant.

            Since as self-hosters we already carry the burden of maintenance, updates, security, and infrastructure costs that cloud users don’t, would you consider documenting how to enable the cloud features in self-hosted setups?

            I see the docs cover basic environment variables, but not for Pages View, Web Vitals, or VPN/ASN tracking. Even if some features need extra config (SMTP, OAuth creds), having that documented would help those of us willing to do the work.

            That would truly differentiate Rybbit from Plausible/Fathom—not just code parity, but empowering self-hosters with full feature access.

          • spacelord@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            15 days ago

            That’s misleading. While copyright owners aren’t bound by their own license, AGPL Section 13 requires that when they run AGPL software as a network service, they must make the complete source available to users.

            The AGPL was specifically designed to close the “SaaS loophole.” Being the copyright owner doesn’t exempt you from AGPL’s network service requirements if you’re distributing under that license.

            • GameGod@lemmy.caEnglish
              0·
              13 days ago

              This is flat out wrong. If you’re the copyright owner, you’re not licensing the code to yourself. The AGPL is the license under which they’re making the open source version available to YOU. The version they run themselves is proprietary.

              • spacelord@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                0·
                13 days ago

                That’s inacurrate. Licensing representation matters. If the cloud service is genuinely presented as AGPL-licensed, Section 13 obligations apply regardless of copyright ownership. However, copyright owners remain free to maintain truly separate proprietary versions under dual licensing.

                • GameGod@lemmy.caEnglish
                  0·
                  7 days ago

                  Licensing representation matters

                  It doesn’t, because they’re the copyright owners. Think of their software as dual licensed: They run it themselves under a proprietary license, under which they reserve all rights. That has nothing to do with the AGPL version that they license to you. The AGPL doesn’t take away the rights they have as copyright owners, nor does it preclude dual licensing.

                  (Are you a bot? Your reply is written like ChatGPT, and it has that self-defeating logic that ChatGPT has sometimes… eg. you wrote that you disagree with me, but then parroted the exact thing that I said.)

    • EarMaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      The free self hosted version is heavily limited. I will stick with Plausible which may be simpler but also doesn’t want to push me into a subscription.

      • spacelord@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        12 days ago

        Plausible is at least honest about it being an “open core” business model. They openly document what’s missing and why (funding sustainability).

        The premium features are likely not in the AGPL repo at all - they’re genuinely separate proprietary code. They seem to be AGPL compliant because they’re transparent that community edition is a subset, not claiming “everything’s there, just toggled off”.

    • danhab99@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      16 days ago

      The same advantages as all free and open source solution, it’s free and open source. That means how much it’s going to cost to your business is directly under your control. You can make a decision on how you acquire hardware based on your business’s needs. If you want to add or change features you can decide how to do that based on the deals you have with your programmers (like pick the developer you have with the best skills and the lowest cost), and then you get to control how much it costs you and how reliable the result is going to be.

      If you feel like the support you get from customer service from Amazon or Google or Microsoft is reliable enough and you don’t need more reliability then go ahead and stick with paid products. But if you already have a team of really expensive and talented engineers you might as well let them solve problems with free and open source equipment.

    • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      16 days ago

      from what i know, awstats gets analytics from server-side logs while Rybbit uses a client side script. So not really and apples to apples comparison

  • solrize@lemmy.mlEnglish
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    17 days ago

    Aren’t there already tons of these already? Piwik has been around for a quite a while, plus there are others mentioned in the comments.

  • rekabis@lemmy.caEnglish
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    16 days ago

    OpenBSD does not have a docker engine. Can this be installed without docker?

  • houjou@jlai.luEnglish
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    16 days ago

    it looks beautiful!! do you plan on making the wcv available for the self hosted version in the future?

  • Lung@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    17 days ago

    Wow holy crap, great work - the world badly needs this. Im assuming the mechanism is the same, you inject a js script into your site. I’m also very interested in pure server side solutions for analytics, but they can’t hit all the features you did in a generic way afaik

    • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      17 days ago

      Yea, we use a client-side script like almost everyone else. The major difference is that we don’t use cookies so you can avoid a lot of the cookie banner/GDPR nonsense.

      Rybbit definitely isn’t the first open source cookieless web analytics platform (Plausible and Umami are the two other big ones), but it’s probably the most “all-in-one” of all these alternatives.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
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    17 days ago

    You mentioned being frustrated at Plausible. What did you not like about it?

    I haven’t tried Plausible, but it seemed popular

    • Goldflag@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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      17 days ago

      it didn’t have enough features, especially since the community version is heavily nerfed (it’s missing even funnels)