Respectlytics Is Now Fully Open Source
From SDK to Server

Every line of code — from the SDKs in your app to the server processing your events — is now public. Audit it, self-host it, or use our managed SaaS. Your choice.

When we launched Respectlytics, our SDKs were already open source under the MIT license. That let developers audit exactly what data leaves their app — no hidden tracking, no surprises. But the server that received that data was closed. Today, that changes. The entire Respectlytics stack — SDKs and server — is now open source.

🚀 What changed

We published the Respectlytics server as the Community Edition under the AGPL-3.0 license. This is the same analytics engine that powers our managed SaaS — session analytics, funnel tracking, behavioral analysis, automated drop-off detection, the full API. Nothing held back.

Here is what the full stack looks like now:

🔍 Why open source the server?

Privacy claims are only as good as the code behind them. We tell developers that Respectlytics stores exactly 5 fields per event — event_name, session_id, timestamp, platform, and country. That IP addresses are processed transiently for geolocation and immediately discarded. That extra fields are silently rejected.

With open-source SDKs alone, you could verify the client side. But you had to trust us on the server side. That trust gap bothered us. Now you can read the Django models, the API views, the privacy guards. The claim is verifiable end to end.

⚙️ The open-core model

This is an open-core approach. The Community Edition includes the full analytics engine:

The managed SaaS adds operational features on top — automated 90-day retention purging, quota management, billing, email alerts, and EU-hosted infrastructure. These are the things you would rather not maintain yourself.

🛠️ Self-hosting in 5 minutes

The Community Edition is designed to be simple. It needs Django and PostgreSQL — no ClickHouse, no Kafka, no Redis. Here is how to get started:

git clone https://github.com/respectlytics/respectlytics.git
cd respectlytics
cp .env.example .env    # edit with your secrets
docker compose up -d

That gives you the full analytics server with a PostgreSQL database. Point any Respectlytics SDK at your instance:

Respectlytics.configure(
    apiKey: "your-api-key",
    apiEndpoint: "https://your-server.com"
)

🛡️ Why this matters for privacy

Many analytics vendors display compliance badges on their marketing pages. These badges represent a vendor's promise. Open-source code is something different — it is proof.

This does not make Respectlytics "compliant" with any specific regulation. Compliance depends on your jurisdiction, use case, and how you deploy. But it makes the system transparent, defensible, and auditable — which is what security reviews actually need.

📄 Why MIT for SDKs and AGPL for the server?

SDKs ship inside your mobile app binary. MIT is the standard for libraries you embed — no license friction, no attribution headaches beyond keeping the license file.

The server runs on your infrastructure. AGPL-3.0 ensures that if someone modifies and deploys the server, those modifications stay open. This protects the community while still allowing private deployment for your own analytics.

❓ Frequently asked questions