Gnat

Small, quiet, everywhere. Self-hosted analytics without the bloat.

Gnat is a single lightweight Go binary for self-hosted, privacy-first web analytics. Download it, write a small config file, run it. No Docker, no multi-service stack, no per-language SDKs. Any backend just POSTs JSON.

Why Gnat

Most self-hosted analytics tools force a tradeoff. GoatCounter is simple to run but light on features. Plausible and PostHog are feature-rich but need a stack of services to operate. Gnat aims to combine the deployment simplicity of a single binary with real analytics depth, plus an AI-native layer that none of the others offer yet.

• Single Go binary, no CGO required
• SQLite, Postgres, or MySQL, your choice
• Raw HTTP ingestion, no SDKs needed for any backend language
• Funnels, cohorts, retention curves, and auto-discovered path analysis
• Built-in MCP server so AI agents can query your analytics directly
• Optional AI-generated summaries of your stats, using your own API key
• CSV, JSON, and raw SQL export, it is your data

Status

Early development. Not ready for production use yet.

Quickstart

go build ./...
go run ./cmd/gnat -config ./gnat.yaml

Minimal config file:

server:
  bind_port: 8080
  public_url: "http://localhost:8080"

database:
  driver: sqlite
  path: "./analytics.db"

api_key: "generate-a-random-secret-here"

retention:
  raw_events_days: 0

updates:
  check_for_updates: true

Architecture

Everything runs in one process:

• HTTP server and event ingestion
• Storage via GORM, swappable between SQLite, Postgres, and MySQL
• Query API that powers both the embedded dashboard and any custom UI
• Embedded dashboard, served as static files via Go's embed package
• Background jobs for path precomputation, retention cleanup, and AI summaries
• MCP server for AI agent access

License

Source-available, Elastic License 2.0 style. See LICENSE.