979 stars · Apache-2.0 for the code (read from /blob/development/LICENSE — the default branch is development, so main-based paths 404; stock text with the copyright line left as the template). SEPARATE RESTRICTION: the README states the Offen Fair Web Analytics icon and logo are CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0, which forbids commercial use and forbids derivatives. · v1.4.2 (2024-05-22, year confirmed by Docker Hub's tag API after pkg.go.dev proved unusable) against a code date of 2026-03-04 — two years and four months apart, and the container tag 'latest' still points at the 2024 build · Track this in Scout
Visitor counting where each visitor's own data is encrypted and they can read or delete it themselves.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
Offen, which calls itself Fair Web Analytics, is a self-hosted server written in Go. Each visitor's events are encrypted with a key held in their own browser, so the operator can see totals but cannot read one person's history unless that person opens it.
What it is good for. Anyone who has to show, rather than claim, that they do not keep readable records about individual readers. The visitor-facing page is the whole point: you can link to it and a reader can check for themselves. It suits a small site where being able to prove the claim matters more than having the fullest possible numbers.
- The design is genuinely different, not a marketing line. The operator holds data they cannot read, and the visitor can delete their own part of it at any time.
- It is one program with first-party cookies only, so nothing is loaded from anybody else's domain and there is no third party in the path.
- The code licence is plain Apache-2.0, read from the file. The project has public funding from NLnet and NGI rather than a paid tier pulling features out of it.
- ⚠ The newest tagged version is v1.4.2 of 22 May 2024, and the code has moved since — last on 4 March 2026. The ready-made container image tagged
latestis still the 2024 build. So you either install software from two years ago or build an untagged version yourself. That is the single biggest cost here. - Its front page documents only a throwaway demo, which pipes a script from the internet into a shell, and a developer setup built on
make. There is no plain production install command anywhere in the repository. - Collection is opt-in with a consent banner, so your numbers are structurally incomplete by design. And although the code is Apache-2.0, ⚠ the icon and logo are licensed CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0, which forbids commercial use and forbids changing them — a restriction that sits outside the code licence entirely.
arp242/goatcounterCovered in Edition 30. The same small no-personal-data counting in one downloaded program and far more actively maintained, but with no consent banner and no per-visitor encryption; its EUPL-1.2 carries an author's edit to the compatible-licence appendix.
Track this in Scout- plausible/analytics
The same audience and the same cookie-free promise, far better maintained, but much heavier to run and the self-hosted edition has fewer features than the paid one.
Track this in Scout - usefathom/fathom
Also a single small program for privacy-first counting, and feature-frozen by its own maintainers.
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curl https://demo.offen.dev | bash
