There are two kinds of tools here. Web analytics answers ‘how many people came, from where, to which pages’, usually without cookies. Product analytics answers ‘what do users do inside the app’, with events, funnels and retention.
Web analytics
1
umami umami-software/umami
Simple, privacy-first analytics with a clean dashboard. MIT-licensed and the most-starred of the lightweight tools.
2
analytics plausible/analytics
Lightweight, cookie-free and built as a Google Analytics alternative. AGPL-3.0; also sold as a hosted service.
3
matomo matomo-org/matomo
The closest in depth to Google Analytics: goals, e-commerce, heatmaps via plugins. A long track record with public institutions.
4
goatcounter arp242/goatcounter
Minimal analytics that avoids tracking personal data. Tiny footprint, easy to self-host.
5
Ackee electerious/Ackee
A self-hosted Node.js analytics tool for people who care about privacy.
Product analytics
6
posthog PostHog/posthog
Product analytics plus session replay, feature flags and experiments in one platform. The heaviest to self-host, and the most complete.
7
openpanel Openpanel-dev/openpanel
Web and product analytics together, positioned as an open-source alternative to Mixpanel.
How to choose
A marketing site or blog: Umami or Plausible. Replacing GA4 feature for feature: Matomo. A SaaS product that needs funnels and retention: PostHog or OpenPanel.
How we pick: we start from every public GitHub repository with 1,000+ stars, keep the projects that do the job in the title, and read their descriptions and licenses. Stars show community size, not quality, so we also show maintenance status. Nobody paid to be listed.