OpenPanel

What OpenPanel does

OpenPanel combines two kinds of analytics that are usually sold separately. One side is a traffic dashboard in the style of Plausible or Google Analytics: visitors, sources, pages and devices. The other is event-based product analytics in the style of Mixpanel: funnels, cohorts, retention, individual user profiles and per-user session history. Session replay and A/B testing are built in, and notification rules can post to Slack, Discord or a webhook when an event or funnel step happens.

The project presents itself mainly as an open source alternative to Mixpanel, and its official SDKs reflect that product focus: browser, Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, Express, React Native, Swift, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, Rust and Java.

Privacy and cookies

Tracking is cookieless by default. Anonymous visitors get a device ID hashed from the user agent, IP address, project and a salt that changes every day at midnight UTC, so the same anonymous visitor is not linked from one day to the next. When your app calls identify() with its own user ID, OpenPanel follows that known user across devices, which is useful for product analytics but is personal data you are responsible for.

For places where consent is needed first, the SDK has a consent mode that queues events and replay data until your code tells it the visitor has agreed.

Self-hosting OpenPanel

OpenPanel is self-hosted with Docker Compose through its CLI installer, and the documentation also covers Coolify and Dokploy; a Helm chart for Kubernetes is maintained by the community. The stack has four services: PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, Redis and Redpanda, with Caddy as an optional proxy. The documentation asks for at least 4 GB of RAM and recommends 6 GB or more for Docker Compose.

Public releases are published on Docker Hub. Images built from every commit are reserved for paying supporters through a private registry, so free self-hosters get new features with the periodic public releases. Email delivery is optional, but you need it for password resets and invitations.

Hosted version

The developers run a hosted service with usage-based plans and a 30-day trial. The pricing FAQ says there is no free tier, although qualifying open source projects can apply for free access.

Limitations

The self-hosted stack is one of the heavier ones in this category, and the newest builds are not public. Without a free cloud tier, small sites that do not want to host it themselves have to pay after the trial.

Who it suits

OpenPanel suits product teams and developers who want Mixpanel-style funnels, cohorts and user profiles alongside ordinary traffic reports, across web, mobile and backend code, and who are comfortable running ClickHouse or paying for the hosted version.