Web analytics · Counter.dev open-source project

Counter

Minimalist AGPL-licensed analytics showing only daily unique visitors and referrals, self-hostable, pay-what-you-want.

Visit Counter Alternatives

Counter (counter.dev) is a deliberately minimal, fully open-source (AGPL-3.0) web analytics tool, with both frontend and backend published on GitHub and an official Docker self-hosting recipe (Go, Redis and SQL). It also runs as a hosted SaaS service, with data stored on Linode servers in Frankfurt, Germany. Rather than tiered pricing, Counter uses a "pay when ready" model: the service is free and fully usable with no quotas or feature gates, and the vendor asks users to voluntarily contribute once ready rather than enforcing payment. It tracks no cookies, no logging and no IP-address fingerprinting for visitor tracking (the dashboard login itself uses an authentication cookie). Where Pirsch and GoatCounter add events, funnels or campaign detail, Counter narrows its dashboard to unique visitors per day and referring sites only, aimed at people who want the smallest possible analytics surface.

At a glance

Vendor Counter.dev open-source project
Pricing model Free
Free tier Yes
Deployment Cloud, Self-hosted
Open source Yes (AGPL-3.0)
Best for Developers and hobby-site owners who want the smallest possible privacy-friendly analytics widget and are comfortable without event or funnel tracking.

Pricing

"Pay when ready": the hosted service is fully free to use with no quotas or feature restrictions and no enforced payment; the vendor invites optional voluntary contributions once logged in. No numeric price tiers are published.

Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site.

Features

  • Cookieless visitor tracking (no cookies, logging, or IP fingerprinting for site visitors)
  • Daily unique-visitor counts as the core metric
  • Referral tracking showing which sites link to yours
  • Geographical, device, platform, browser, and screen-size breakdowns
  • Deliberately narrow, single-purpose dashboard with no funnels or event tracking
  • Fully open-source frontend and backend, self-hostable via an official Docker recipe
  • Live public demo dashboard

Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026

Alternatives

GoatCounter Single-developer open-source analytics, free for reasonable public use hosted or fully self-hosted, no numeric price tiers. Pirsch Analytics German/EU-hosted cookieless web analytics SaaS with usage-based pricing and an open-source Go tracking core. Umami MIT-licensed, open-source analytics that can be self-hosted for free or run on Umami Cloud, billed on events rather than pageviews.

Counter in the index now

Terms to know

First-party data Data a company collects directly from its own customers and properties, rather than acquiring it from outside sources. Consent mode A Google framework that adjusts how its tags behave based on a visitor's cookie consent choices. Session A grouped window of a user's activity on a site or app, bounded by an inactivity timeout or similar cutoff rule. Event tracking Capturing specific user actions, such as clicks or purchases, as discrete, named pieces of data. Unique visitors The count of distinct individuals, approximated by a client identifier, who visited a site within a given period.