No. 18 of 30 ยท Open source and self-hosted
Ackee
A self-hosted analytics node you can deploy in an evening and forget about.
There is no hosted version at all, which is a deliberate choice rather than a missing feature.
The verdict
Ackee is a self-hosted, cookieless analytics service built on Node and MongoDB, with a GraphQL API and a clean dark dashboard. There is no hosted offering and there is not going to be one: the project's position is that you run it, which makes the ownership question trivially simple and the operational question entirely yours.
It collects what it needs and no more. Views, durations, referrers, browsers, devices, screen sizes and operating systems, with an anonymisation model that makes returning-visitor detection deliberately imprecise.
What you actually get
The depth score of 2 is the lowest in this category and it is accurate. There are no funnels, no goals worth the name, no segmentation, no behaviour tooling, and the reporting is closer to a status board than an analysis tool. Ackee is for somebody who wants to know their site is being read and does not want to send that fact to anybody else.
The MongoDB dependency is worth flagging, because it is heavier to operate than the SQLite or Postgres options elsewhere in this category, and for a personal site it is more database than the job needs. Development has been intermittent rather than steady, which for self-hosted software you control matters less than it would for a service, but it is still a signal about how much future to expect.
Best for
Developers who want a small, private, self-hosted view of their own traffic, with a GraphQL API to build against, and who already run a container host.
Getting it running
Docker against MongoDB, which is an evening's work if you are comfortable with both, and a frustrating one if you are not.
What to watch out for
The shallowest feature set in the open-source group: no funnels, no segmentation, no behaviour tooling. MongoDB is a heavier dependency than rivals require. Development activity has been intermittent. No hosted option, so there is no fallback if self-hosting stops being fun.
Pricing and practicalities
Free and open source, self-hosted only. Node and MongoDB. GraphQL API. Under two kilobytes of client script, and it can be used without cookies entirely. Read 2026-09-11.
Who should go elsewhere
Anyone who wants a hosted option or a real feature set, where Umami is the obvious upgrade in the same spirit. Also wrong for businesses that need support and continuity, where Plausible Analytics or Absolutely Analytics carry a vendor behind them.
How it compares
Against Umami it is the smaller, narrower project with a heavier database requirement, and Umami wins on nearly every axis except minimalism. Against GoatCounter it is the prettier dashboard with the more awkward deployment.
The ten measures
Each measure is scored 0 to 10 and weighted. The overall figure is the weighted mean, and it is relative to the other 29 tools on this list rather than absolute. How this works.
What this rests on
Ackee's own documentation and public repository, read 2026-09-11, including its stated requirements, anonymisation approach and API.
Desk research against the project's documentation and public repository, including commit activity. This is one of the thinner entries on the list and every score should be read as provisional: the project publishes little beyond its README.
This is a desk review. I have not been given access by the vendor, I have no commercial relationship with them, and everything above is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. If something here is wrong, tell me and I will correct it.