# GoAccess

8 Hacker News commenters recommended GoAccess and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Fast terminal and HTML analyzer for Caddy and Nginx logs that needs no database, and few alternatives match it. Setup and log rotation hooks can be fiddly.

## Why people recommend it

- Works with Caddy and Nginx logs (2 comments): "It's a oneliner for us, we run Caddy at the office and just specify --log-format=CADDY --keep-last=90 --date-spec=min" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292912)) "To get basic but effective analytics, use GoAccess and point it at the Caddy or Nginx logs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47675191))
- Simple one-line setup once configured (2 comments): "It's a oneliner for us, we run Caddy at the office and just specify --log-format=CADDY --keep-last=90 --date-spec=min" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292912)) "once I got it working satisfactorily it's been working well since" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49292301))

## What people warn about

- Hard to deploy at first (1 comments): "it was kind of a burden to get deployed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291704))
- Logrotate hook breaks (1 comments): "my logrotate script (that hooks in Goaccess) to blow up every time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49673931))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [lnav](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lnav.md): 14 recommend
- [Log File Viewer for the Terminal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/log-file-viewer-for-the-terminal.md): 8 recommend
- [journalctl](https://hackerapproved.com/p/journalctl.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GoAccess", https://hackerapproved.com/p/goaccess/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).