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Tool profile · Product analytics

Countly

Mobile-first analytics you can run on-premise — but check the licence.

66
sovereignty

Countly is built around mobile and IoT rather than the web, with crash reporting, push notifications and user profiles alongside analytics, and a long history of on-premise deployment in regulated and government settings. Around 5.9k stars. One correction to how it is usually listed: Countly is very often described as open source, but the community edition ships under a custom "Countly Lite License" rather than an OSI-approved licence — it is source-available, with restrictions, and the terms are worth reading before you build a product on it. Included here because the mobile and on-premise combination is genuinely rare, and because the licence deserves to be stated accurately.

SOURCE-AVAILABLECountly Lite License (custom, source-available — not OSI open source)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseCountly Lite License (custom, source-available — not OSI open source)
PricingCommunity edition free to self-host under its own licence terms; enterprise is commercial.
Open sourceNo
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes

What it does well

  • +Mobile and IoT first, where most of this category is web first
  • +Crash reporting and push notifications alongside analytics
  • +Long track record of on-premise deployment in regulated environments
  • +Rich user-profile and cohort features in the enterprise tier

Where it falls short

  • Not open source despite being widely listed as such — read the Lite License
  • Much of the useful functionality sits in the paid enterprise edition
  • Smaller community than every other option here
  • Heavier to deploy than Umami or OpenPanel

Countly as an alternative to

Where Countly shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.

Countly head-to-head

Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.

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