Shynet is billed as a modern, privacy-friendly, and cookie-free web analytics.
You host it yourself, so the data is yours. It works without cookies, so you don’t need any intrusive cookie notices. It collects just enough data to be useful.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Architecture:
- Runs on a single machine – Shynet can run as a single docker container on a single small VPS.
- Runs across a giant Kubernetes cluster – For higher traffic installations, Shynet can be deployed .with as many parallelized ingress nodes as needed, with Redis caching and separate backend workers for database IO.
- Built using Django – so deploying, updating, and migrating can be done without headaches
- Multiple users and sites – A single Shynet instance can support multiple users, each tracking multiple different sites.
- Tracking:
- JavaScript not required – it will fallback to using a 1×1 transparent tracking pixel if JavaScript isn’t available.
- Lightweight – the tracking script weighs less than a kilobyte (and doesn’t look like your typical tracking script).
- Generally not blocked – because the software is self-hosted it tends not to be on ad block lists.
- Primary-key integration – easily associate visitors in Shynet with their user accounts on your site.
- Metrics:
- Hits – how many pages were opened/viewed.
- Sessions – how many times your site was visited (essentially a collection of hits).
- Page load time – how long the pages took to load.
- Bounce rate – the percentage of visitors who left after just one page.
- Duration – how long visitors stayed.
- Referrers – the links visitors followed.
- Locations – the relative popularity of all the pages.
- Operating system – your visitors’ OS (from user agent).
- Browser – your visitors’ browser (from user agent).
- Geographic location & network – general location of your visitors (from IP).
- Device type – whether your visitors are using a desktop, tablet, or phone (from user agent).
- Workflow:
- Collaboration built-in – Administrators can easily share services with other users, as well
- Accounts (or not) – Fully featured account management workflow (powered by Django Allauth).
Website: github.com/milesmcc/shynet
Support:
Developer: R. Miles McCain and contributors
License: Apache License 2.0

Shynet is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Analytics Software | |
|---|---|
| Matomo | Web analytics platform available in 48 languages |
| GoAccess | Real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer |
| Umami | Privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics |
| Rybbit | Another privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics |
| Open Web Analytics | Add web analytics using simple Javascript, PHP, or REST based APIs |
| Plausible | Privacy-friendly web analytics alternative |
| Shynet | Modern, privacy-friendly, and cookie-free web analytics |
| GoatCounter | Web analytics platform that offers a privacy-friendly alternative |
| W3Perl | Logfile analyser based on logfiles parsing |
| Tianji | Website analytics, uptime monitor and server status |
| Ackee | Useful website statistics without invasive tracking |
| AWStats | Advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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