GoAccess
Shares rank 2 of 4 log viewers by recommenders
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.
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.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works with Caddy and Nginx logs
“It's a oneliner for us, we run Caddy at the office and just specify --log-format=CADDY --keep-last=90 --date-spec=min”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “GoAccess – open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer” “To get basic but effective analytics, use GoAccess and point it at the Caddy or Nginx logs.”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Running Out of Disk Space in Production” Simple one-line setup once configured
“It's a oneliner for us, we run Caddy at the office and just specify --log-format=CADDY --keep-last=90 --date-spec=min”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “GoAccess – open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer” “once I got it working satisfactorily it's been working well since”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “GoAccess – open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard to deploy at first
“it was kind of a burden to get deployed”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “GoAccess – open-source real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer” Logrotate hook breaks
“my logrotate script (that hooks in Goaccess) to blow up every time”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “My last six months at Evernote”
Other log viewers people recommend
The three most recommended other log viewers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lnav | 14 | 3 | 82% | 5 | — | Approved |
| GoAccessThis page | 8 | 2 | 80% | 5 | — | — |
| Log File Viewer for the Terminal | 8 | 2 | 80% | 1 | — | — |
| journalctl | 7 | 10 | 41% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
12 of the 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“my logrotate script (that hooks in Goaccess) to blow up every time”
“GoAccess is an awesome tool!”
“We use it more for server performance and metrics that cookie-cutter JS analytics tools can't really provide.”
“It's a oneliner for us, we run Caddy at the office and just specify --log-format=CADDY --keep-last=90 --date-spec=min”
“there's still no other tool that does what GoAccess does quite as well”
“once I got it working satisfactorily it's been working well since”
“it was kind of a burden to get deployed”
“Yes, this is unfortunately my experience with GoAccess”
“So many scrapers are pretending to be browsers.”
“To get basic but effective analytics, use GoAccess and point it at the Caddy or Nginx logs.”
“excellent fast CLI analyser that runs either in the terminal and can also generate HTML reports”
“No DB needed, only log files.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.