---
title: "AWStats vs Google Analytics — A Privacy-Friendly Alternative"
language: en
topics: ["data", "server", "web"]
full_article_url: https://willem.com/en/2018-08-20_google-analytics-vs-awstats/
---
# AWStats vs Google Analytics — A Privacy-Friendly Alternative

*Server-side analytics that work without cookies, JavaScript, or tracking your visitors.*

> Google Analytics is powerful but tracks your visitors across the web. AWStats reads your server logs directly — no cookies, no JavaScript, no third-party data collection. Willem compared both and switched.

Google Analytics requires a JavaScript snippet on every page that sends visitor data to Google's servers. This data is used for advertising, shared across Google products, and requires cookie consent banners in the EU.



**AWStats** takes a completely different approach: it reads your web server's access logs (Apache, Nginx) and generates statistics locally. No JavaScript, no cookies, no external requests. Your visitors' data never leaves your server.

The trade-off: AWStats can't track JavaScript-driven interactions (clicks, scroll depth, single-page apps). But for most websites, the server logs tell you everything you need: pages viewed, referrers, countries, browsers, bandwidth.

Willem runs AWStats on all his sites and supplements it with Plausible for privacy-friendly real-time stats.

From Willem's writing on [self-hosting your own infrastructure](https://willem.com/en/self-hosting-running-your-own-infrastructure-on-linux/).