{"slug": "goaccess", "name": "GoAccess", "category": "observability", "category_name": "Monitoring and analytics", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 4.903, "rising": 2.35, "first": "2025-12-26", "latest": "2026-08-14", "why": "Another one for personal sites is GoAccess. No DB needed, only log files.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 3, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Another one for personal sites is GoAccess. No DB needed, only log files.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "goaccess.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://goaccess.io", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["GoAccess"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 788694048, "item_id": 49293378, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293378", "by": "guessmyname", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GoAccess is an awesome tool!", "excerpt": "GoAccess is an awesome tool! If I recall correctly, it was developed as an alternative (Go port) of a popular log analyzer called lnav (https://lnav.org), which is quite popular too: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lnav.org", "context": "", "use_case": "Real-time log analysis", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788687424, "item_id": 49292964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292964", "by": "joshyi", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We use it more for server performance and metrics that cookie-cutter JS analytics tools can't really provide.", "excerpt": "If you're using it to serve the marketing team, then yeah. We use it more for server performance and metrics that cookie-cutter JS analytics tools can't really provide. btw, JS-based analytics are no longer as accurate for identifying \"real humans\" as they used to be. bots have gotten much better at behaving like a person behind a keyboard, so it's increasingly easy for them to make your analytics tool think they're ", "context": "", "use_case": "server performance metrics", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788685840, "item_id": 49292865, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292865", "by": "joshyi", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there's still no other tool that does what GoAccess does quite as well", "excerpt": "and honestly, there's still no other tool that does what GoAccess does quite as well. Most of the alternatives are cookie-cutter, JS-based Google Analytics wannabes. And with bots becoming much smarter and more prevalent when accessing websites, relying solely on JS-based tracking isn't as trustworthy anymore. We use GoAccess to capture what JS-based analytics can't, e.g., server side perf and traffic data. It's not ", "context": "", "use_case": "server-side perf and traffic data", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788671424, "item_id": 49291964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291964", "by": "tredre3", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GoAccess supports more than combined format.", "excerpt": "GoAccess supports more than combined format. I think they even support stubborn servers who output JSON logs only: https://goaccess.io/man#custom-log", "context": "", "use_case": "Web server log analysis", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 785197536, "item_id": 49074846, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49074846", "by": "abnercoimbre", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Landed on GoAccess", "excerpt": "Nice! I've been shopping around lately. Landed on GoAccess [0] although one could argue they're not necessarily the same thing. [0] https://goaccess.io/", "context": "", "use_case": "Web log analytics", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoatCounter"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["web server log analysis", "real-time log analysis", "server performance metrics", "server-side perf and traffic data", "web log analytics", "web server log analytics"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49288296", "title": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071936", "title": "GoatCounter", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374524", "title": "Migrating my web analytics from Matomo to Umami", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 788739088, "item_id": 49296193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49296193", "by": "QuantumNomad_", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "making GoAccess use the ASN db was just a matter of adding the same --geoip-database argument", "excerpt": "Sweet! After reading your reply I had a look and downloaded the DB-IP ASN Lite db also. From before I had the DB-IP City Lite db. And then making GoAccess use the ASN db was just a matter of adding the same --geoip-database argument again to GoAccess that I already use with the city db file path, but with the ASN db file path. As per the manual https://goaccess.io/man which even includes exactly using both city and A", "context": "", "use_case": "Web server log analysis", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788694048, "item_id": 49293378, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293378", "by": "guessmyname", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GoAccess is an awesome tool!", "excerpt": "GoAccess is an awesome tool! If I recall correctly, it was developed as an alternative (Go port) of a popular log analyzer called lnav (https://lnav.org), which is quite popular too: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lnav.org", "context": "", "use_case": "Real-time log analysis", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788687424, "item_id": 49292964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292964", "by": "joshyi", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We use it more for server performance and metrics that cookie-cutter JS analytics tools can't really provide.", "excerpt": "If you're using it to serve the marketing team, then yeah. We use it more for server performance and metrics that cookie-cutter JS analytics tools can't really provide. btw, JS-based analytics are no longer as accurate for identifying \"real humans\" as they used to be. bots have gotten much better at behaving like a person behind a keyboard, so it's increasingly easy for them to make your analytics tool think they're ", "context": "", "use_case": "server performance metrics", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788685840, "item_id": 49292865, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292865", "by": "joshyi", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there's still no other tool that does what GoAccess does quite as well", "excerpt": "and honestly, there's still no other tool that does what GoAccess does quite as well. Most of the alternatives are cookie-cutter, JS-based Google Analytics wannabes. And with bots becoming much smarter and more prevalent when accessing websites, relying solely on JS-based tracking isn't as trustworthy anymore. We use GoAccess to capture what JS-based analytics can't, e.g., server side perf and traffic data. It's not ", "context": "", "use_case": "server-side perf and traffic data", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 788671424, "item_id": 49291964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291964", "by": "tredre3", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GoAccess supports more than combined format.", "excerpt": "GoAccess supports more than combined format. I think they even support stubborn servers who output JSON logs only: https://goaccess.io/man#custom-log", "context": "", "use_case": "Web server log analysis", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoAccess \u2013 open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer"}, {"id": 785197536, "item_id": 49074846, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49074846", "by": "abnercoimbre", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Landed on GoAccess", "excerpt": "Nice! I've been shopping around lately. Landed on GoAccess [0] although one could argue they're not necessarily the same thing. [0] https://goaccess.io/", "context": "", "use_case": "Web log analytics", "switched_from": "", "story": "GoatCounter"}, {"id": 742385472, "item_id": 46399092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46399092", "by": "canpan", "date": "2025-12-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Another one for personal sites is GoAccess. No DB needed, only log files.", "excerpt": "Another one for personal sites is GoAccess. No DB needed, only log files. It shows nicely; which page was visited, how often, browser statistics etc. https://goaccess.io/", "context": "", "use_case": "Web server log analytics", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating my web analytics from Matomo to Umami"}]}