3,151 stars · Apache-2.0 (read from /blob/master/LICENSE; stock unmodified text with the copyright line left as the template) · v0.14.0 (2026-03-15; no package registry publishes this project, and the yearless release timestamp matches the ungh pushedAt to the second, 2026-03-15T23:00:29Z, which is what settles the year) · Track this in Scout
Self-hosted visitor counting that works from the server's own records, with no cookies.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
Shynet is a web application written in Django, a long-established Python framework. It records page views, sessions, where people arrived from, their country and their kind of device, and shows them in a plain web screen for each site you add.
What it is good for. Anyone who wants to know whether their writing is read, and does not want to send every reader to an advertising company to find out. It also suits anyone in a place with strict rules about visitor consent: because it collects no cookies and stores no personal identifier, the usual consent banner question largely disappears.
- It can run with no script on the page at all, using a single invisible image instead, so it still counts people whose browser blocks scripts.
- It will run on SQLite, a database that is just a file, so you do not have to set up a separate database server to try it.
- The licence is plain Apache-2.0, read from the file. There is no paid edition, no feature held back and no limit on how many sites you add.
- Setting it up is several steps of hand work: copy a settings template, edit it, start the container, then run two more separate commands to create the administrator and set the name shown in the screen. There is no installer.
- The list of addresses the application will answer on defaults to
localhost, and the project's own guide warns against using the catch-all wildcard. Get that wrong and it silently refuses to work, or answers to the wrong name. - Its front page contains no install commands at all — they are in a separate guide file — and the code has not moved since 15 March 2026, about six and a half months. The last release did carry security fixes, so this is a slowing project rather than a stopped one.
- plausible/analytics
The same cookie-free counting with a much better screen, but it needs two separate databases running side by side and the self-hosted edition deliberately leaves out features the paid service has.
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umami-software/umamiThe same job and far more widely used, but it does not work at all without a script on the page, and it wants Node.js 18.18 or later with PostgreSQL 12.14 or later.
Track this in Scout- usefathom/fathom
The same privacy-first counting in a single program and the easiest of the three to install, but it is the free remnant of a product that went paid and its own description promises maintenance and no new features.
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docker pull milesmcc/shynet:latest
