February 18, 2026
Receipts or it didn’t happen
Show HN: Respectlytics – Open-source, privacy-first mobile analytics (MIT+AGPL)
A “no tracking” analytics drop — commenters want proof, not promises
TLDR: Respectlytics launches a privacy-first analytics tool that stores only minimal, non-personal data and is open-source. Early commenters are intrigued but push for proof: they want real apps using it and comparisons to ad-focused tools before calling it a win, signaling a trust-but-verify moment for privacy tech.
Respectlytics just landed with a bold promise: privacy-first mobile analytics that stores only five simple things and never keeps personal data. No names, no emails, no saved IPs. Anonymous IDs live in memory and auto-rotate; IP is only used to guess your country and then tossed. The vibe? No tracking, just vibes—and the motto “Return of Avoidance” (ROA) is already a catchphrase. You can self-host it, and the GitHub pitch says you’ll be up in minutes.
But the crowd wants receipts. Early in the thread, ddxv (who worked on OpenAttribution, a tool for ad tracking/MMP—Mobile Measurement Partner) jumped in with “love to chat” energy and a very pointed ask: show real apps on the App Store or Play Store using Respectlytics so they can tag them in AppGoblin’s SDK lists. Translation: who’s actually using this? That set the tone—curious, excited, but hungry for proof.
The strongest opinions orbit practicality: is privacy-first analytics useful without personal data, or does it become “analytics lite”? There’s cautious enthusiasm for the clean design (5 fields!) and the self-hosted control, but paired with a show-me attitude. Jokes flew about ROA sounding like a movie sequel, and the thread’s mood felt like: “This could be the hero we need—if someone, anyone, ships it in the wild.”
Key Points
- •Respectlytics Community Edition is an open-source, privacy-first, self-hosted mobile analytics server that stores only five fields per event and retains no personal data.
- •Session identifiers are anonymized, stored only in RAM, and rotate every two hours or on app restart; IPs are used transiently for country derivation and then discarded.
- •A Docker quick start and a manual setup are provided; manual prerequisites include Python 3.12+, PostgreSQL 14+, and Node.js 18+ (for Tailwind CSS).
- •PostgreSQL is required because the system uses django.contrib.postgres aggregates (e.g., ArrayAgg) that are unavailable in SQLite.
- •Configuration is via environment variables with production guidance on DEBUG, ALLOWED_HOSTS, HTTPS via nginx/Caddy, database SSL for managed providers (AWS RDS, DigitalOcean), optional admin 2FA, and optional GeoIP via MaxMind.