About Loglesk

Loglesk is a simple, privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It’s run by a small, bootstrapped, independent, currently a one-man software company. The goal is to build an accurate and the fastest, most lightweight analytics tool. It doesn’t use cookies or collect personal data. All reports and metrics are displayed on one simple page.

Loglesk is tailored especially for indie hackers, solopreneurs, and developers who want simplicity, speed and clarity. To support small creators, it is offered for free for reasonable usage.

Using Loglesk, you 100% own and control all of your website data. This data is not being shared with or sold to any third-parties. You can always export all data and cancel at any time.

Loglesk dashboard

Our Story

It all started as a side project that I made in my free time. At the beginning of 2024, I worked on a new website, and I had to add some simple statistics to it. Just to measure how many people are visiting sites and what are the sources of traffic. Something simple but with all the necessary metrics.

Initially, I reached for Google Analytics. After all, it’s free and popular. But it quickly turned out that this was not the best solution, especially for European companies like the one I worked for at the time. GA invades users’ privacy, using cookies to track users, also forces to display GDPR compliance banners. GA is too complex for the average user, making it hard to find simple insights without wasting time. Also, page performance is affected by the heavy tracking scripts that GA loads. But perhaps worst of all, visitors using ad blockers or privacy browsers are often excluded from tracking, so the data is incomplete.

At that time, I knew that there were alternative solutions. I decided to test a few of them. But found them are either very complex and slow, or too simplistic, or just ugly. I also noticed that most analytics tools are more expensive than a small VPS server (≥$10/month), making it too expensive for personal/hobby or even small company use. For example, Plausible at $9/month plan lets you measure traffic only for one small site (<10k monthly hits), it keeps stats only for 3 years, and doesn’t allow you to export data to a self-hosted instance and vice versa. Self-hosted version, on the other hand, is not the same as a cloud. It lacks features and is less accurate (e.g. it does not filter out bot traffic accurately).

I thought then that it could be a good idea to build my own tool. Something I would be happy to install in every new project, and that others would find useful. Something that may be useful to others who are not completely satisfied with existing solutions. The market for web analytics tools is broad, and there will never be a tool that will perfectly fit everyone.

Besides, it would be a great opportunity to learn something new (although I worked as a data analyst for a short time) and share the results of my work with the open-source community.

So I decided to build a tool to get the features I was really looking for. I try to make Loglesk as good as I can. So I put a lot of effort into making it highly optimized, fast, and most importantly, accurately counting statistics. I’ve kept the tracking script tiny, the UI simple and clean, and the setup process as frictionless as possible.

The goal is to have a better analytics tool that is reliable and as easy to use as possible. I’m building it in the open, and I’ve been spending a lot of my time adding new features and improving existing ones.

What started as a hobby project has now become a solid web analytics tool that helps others, and I hope it makes the internet a bit better.

Why it’s free

Most people don’t use Google Analytics because they like it, but just because it’s free. Most alternative tools don’t have a free plan. Or have something like a free option with “up to 1k hits/month” or “with 1 month of data retention” which is practically useless.

So to “de-Google-fy” the internet in a meaningful way and to make it a bit better place, the alternative tool needs to have a free plan. At least minimal, but real. Now the only other options outside of Google Analytics is to pay upwards of $9/month or to self-host something like Plausible or Matomo, which also isn’t free in terms of hosting costs, maintenance, etc. I think it’s a significant barrier of entry for many users. The average person running a hobby blog or website of their small business doesn’t have the time or know-how.

Of course, I have to pay the bills for servers. So I tried to set prices for larger traffic at a reasonable level to maintain sustainable development of Loglesk. They are not high, because I am a solopreneur and my costs are low, also I have other sources of income. That’s why Loglesk has a free plan for traffic up to 10k/month for personal/hobby use. If you want to support my work or you need additional features, you can choose a paid plan even if you fit within that threshold.

Our goals

  • No cookies used. Loglesk doesn’t use any cookies to track users, which means there’s no need for annoying cookie banners.

  • No personal data collection. Loglesk doesn’t collect or store any personal information like IP addresses, device fingerprints, or unique user IDs. This ensures visitors stay anonymous and can browse your site without being tracked across the web.

  • GDPR, CCPA, and PECR compliant. Loglesk is privacy-friendly, so you can collect statistics without asking for user consent while staying compliant with privacy laws.

  • Lightweight script (<1 kb). Unlike bloated scripts from tools like Google Analytics, Loglesk’s tracking script is ultra-light. This helps your website load faster and improves performance, which is especially important for mobile users and SEO.

  • Hosted in the EU. All data is stored on servers located in the European Union, which helps meet the strictest data protection standards.

  • Aggregated data only. Loglesk focuses on aggregated data rather than individual user tracking. This provides you with the insights you need – like page views, bounce rates, and referrers – without violating privacy.

  • Ad-blocker resistance. Loglesk is privacy-focused and doesn’t use cookies or shady tracking techniques, so its script is less likely to be blocked by ad blockers. This means you get more accurate traffic data.

  • Easy user interface. Loglesk has a clean, single-page dashboard that gives you all the essential data at a glance. There’s no need to dig through complex reports – just the metrics that matter.

  • Open-Source (soon). Loglesk is (will be soon) open source, so anyone can inspect and audit the code. This ensures there’s no hidden tracking or backdoors.

— by Tom Antok