Web Log Analyzers List

Introduction

When I decided to run programs against my web server, "The Server in the Cellar", logs, there were three programs I particularly remember from the ealy 2000s that I wanted to use, Analog, AWStats, and Webalizer. These three became the most popular, but while looking around for information and the download files for them, I realized there were many more.

Many of the programs were free, if not open-source, and many were written in Perl, which made them cross-platform. There were also paid-for services and programs. In 2005, Google introduced Google Analytics which used JavaScript on the visitor's computers to collect information and now nearly all web analytics software is offered as a service rather than a user installed program or script.

This page lists the free old-school web analytics software and scripts I was able to find.

The List

3DStats

Active LogView

Active LogView was a Windows log analyzer. The download links still work.

AlterWind Log Analyzer Lite

AlterWind Log Analyzer Lite was a free web log analyzer. The web log analyzer was first written in 2002, with the last vesion, 4.0, released in 2008. Alterwind also produces a Pro and Standard versions of the software. The download links still work on the site.

Analog

Analog was written by Stephen Turner and released as freeware on June 21, 1995, but the license was changed in November 2004 to the GNU General Public License. Stephen wrote Analog while studying for his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Versions existed for Windows, macOS, Linux, and most Unix-like operating systems but in December 2004, after releasing version 6 of the program, Stephen ceased work on it. The original website, www.analog.cx (Internet Archive), was last updated in 2005 and disappeared in August 2014, but there are mirrors of it still around such as the one at reverse.net and the one at web42.com.

In 2007, as a long-term user of Analog C:Amie revived it and produced an updated version of Analog, Analog CE, with the full download, along with the help files, examples and source code on GitHub. This is this version of Analog that I use.

When I checked in October 2023, the download link on the Analog C:Amie site no longer worked and simple gave a database error. The last available version was 6.0.17 created on June 20, 2021. For this reason I have made a zip file of the files from GitHub that includes the last version of analog.exe for Windows. Download (Zip, 2.15Mb). I cannot accept any responsibility for these files. They are not mine and apart from the broken link on the website, I do not know why they are no longer available. All I can say is that this is the version I use and it appears to work.

AWebVisit

AWebVisit was written by Michel Dalle using Perl in 1998. The last version I can find is 0.1.6b written in 1999.

AWStats

Advanced Web Statistics or more commonly AWStats was written in Perl by Laurent Destailleur in 2000. In 2025, it is still an active project being developed. The last stable release was version 7.9 released in 2023.

AXS

AXS was a set of Perl scripts originally released in 1996 and the last version I can find is 2.3.0.0042 published in 2004. The download links work.

AxxStats

Axxstats was written in 1998 by Johan Larsson. The download link works.

BotWatch

Botwatch was a Perl script written by Simon Wilkinson. It analyzed log files and created a list of the bots seen in them. The script was available from a FTP server that no longers exists and I cannot find another download source of it.

Checklog

Checklog was a Perl script written by Sandy Antunes.

Combined Log System

Combined Log System was written in Perl by Dave Beckett. I cannot find a working download link for this software.

eWLA

eWLA was a Perl log analyzer written by Frederic Tyndiuk in 2000. The download links still work in 2025.

FTPWebLog

FTPWebLog was written by Benjamin "Snowhare" Franz and the last version I can find is 1.0.2 written in 1997. The download links on the page still work. It is capable of producing graphs but that needs Thomas Boutell's GD graphics library.

Here are some examples of the results returned by FTPWebLog

Funnel Web

Funnel Web was first released in January 1997 by the Melbourne, Australia company, Interactive Concepts. Version 5 of the software was released as freeware in 2006. The download links still work.

FWGStat

FWGStat was written in Perl by Jonathan Magid. The last version was 0.41 and Jonathon admits the code was a bit of a mess.

GetStats

Getstats was written in C by Kevin Hughes. It was incredibly fast, being able to manage 21,000 lines per second.

CreateStats was a frontend for GetStats written by Doug Stevenson. The results could be visualized using getgraph.pl written by Martien Verbruggen.

I cannot find a working download site for any of the above.

GoAccess

GoAccess is an open source program to read current log files. Designed for Linux, it is able to be run on Windows using Cygwin or the GNU+Linux Subsystem on Windows 10 or later (WSL)

HTTP-Analyze

HTTP-Analyze was written by Stefan Stapelberg in 1996 and last updated in 2000. It was a fast log analyzer for web servers. It analyzes logfiles and created a detailed summary of the server's access load in tabular and in graphical form. It was free for personal use and for educational establishments, but commerical entities had to pay a license fee. Originally for Linux, there were Windows ports made of it.Global Service Provider still lists it, and several sites for it are on the Internet Archive such as NetStore, and its own site, but I cannot find a working download of it.

HTTP Logs Viewer

HTTP Logs Viewer is a much newer program than some others listed here, but it's free and worth including.

LogScribe

LogScribe was written in Perl in 1996 by Usama Wazeer and Daniel Cedras. It is based on Graphical Access Stats by Matt Kruse and was known as KwikStat for a short while. The download links on the page given work.

LogSite

LogSite started as a commercial program but in 2000, version 1.1 was available as a free download. The download link still works.

MKStats

MKStats was written in Perl by Matt Kruse sometime before 1996. The program was bought by WebTrends in November 1998.

Modlogan

Modlogan was a comprehensive log analyzer written by Jan Kneschke. Like Jan's MyWebalyzer, it appears to have taken design features from Bradford L. Barrett's Webalizer. The final version was 0.8.13 and I don't think there was a port to Windows made for it. It was popular though and the log files can be found on several servers.

Multi Server WebCharts (MW3S & MSWC)

Multi Server WebCharts was written in Perl by Tobias Oetiker some time before 1996. It is not a full log analyzer, it just gives the most popular visited pages over the last week. The last version I can find is version 2.0. The output is simple and the download links still work.

Musage

Musage was a Perl script written in 1995 by Nick Phillips. I cannot find a downloadable copy of the script.

MyWebalizer

MyWebalizer was a rewrite of Bradford L. Barrett's Webalizer by Jan Kneschke.

Paul Beard's Script

In 1996, Paul Beard wrote a Perl script to summarize web log files.

PWebStats

PWebStats was written in Perl by Martin Gleeson in 1995 and the last version was 1.3.8, written in 1999. Luckily someone made an archive of all versions of PWebStats, which work. You can view some of the statistics produced by PWebStats by searching for "produced by pwebstats"

Perl WebStats

Perl Webstats was a log analyzer written by Perl by Arthur Corliss. The last release was version 3.3 written in 2001. I cannot find a working download of the scripts. I cannot find a working download link for the scripts.

PressVu

PressVu was released in 1996, with the last version being 1.0b2. I cannot find a download link that works.

Raytraced Access Stats

Raytraced Access Stats was written by Matt Kruse. The program used the Persistence of Vision Raytracer (POVRay) to produce 3D representations of web logs. The program was the inspiration for Stefan Stapelberg's 3DsSats.

Statbot

Statbot was written by Dave Tubbs and last updated in 1996. The download links do not work.

Statbot Micro

Statbot Micro was a shareware version of Statbot for Windows. The download links do not work.

W3Olista

W3Perl

W3Perl was written by Laurent Domisse in 1995 and the last version made was version 3.20 published on June 30, 2015. Like Michael Boyd Clark, I tried several times but could not get W3Perl to work as a standalone program to produce the site statistics. Like Michael, I think that it needs to be run as a CGI program, something I may look into later.

Web Site Visitor Log

Web Site Visitor Log was a free pre-release version, the last available being version 0.57. I cannot find a working download for this program.

Webalizer

Webalizer was written by Bradford L. Barrett in 1997. Bradford wrote the program in C to be very fast - it can process 70,000 records per second.

The original Webalizer ceased to be updated from version 2.23-08 of August 26, 2013. The project was forked at version 2.1.10.1 of September 29, 2004 by Stone Steps Inc. and it is their version of Webalizer that I use.

When I checked in October 2023, I could not find the download of the version compiled for Windows on the Stone Steps site, but it is available on GitHub, the latest version being 6.3.0 released on January 29, 2023. I have ben using version 6.2.1 which was released on July 3, 2022 and which I downloaded on November 24, 2022.

Due to the limited availability of the files elsewhere, here are the the latest versions of the Webalizer for Windows zip files. Webalizer 6.2.1 (zip, 2Mb) and Webalizer 6.3.0 (zip, 2Mb).

WebLog

WebLog was first written in Perl by Darryl C. Burgdorf in 1997 and last updated as version 2.53 in 2006. The Internet Archive site download links still work in 2025. Carryls wrote several useful Perl scripts and those can be found on the link given for the 2006 version of WebLog.

I downloaded and ran WebLog v2.53 against some server logs on a Windows 11 computer. The results are complete but it seems very slow to complete.

Webtrax

Webtrax was originally written in Perl by John Callender but substantially rewritten by Tom Van Vleck. The earliest Internet Archive mention of it is from 1999. It was last updated in 2006. The file can still be downloaded but now needs an FTP client such as WinSCP rather than through a browser, most of which stopped supporting the FTP protocol in 2023.

Some time before 2022, Tom Van Vleck developed Super Webtrax which needs a MySQL database as well as Perl. The program is also available on GitHub.

Who Accessed My Pages (WAMP)

WAMP was written in Perl by Jake Kesinger in 1994.

WWWStat

WWWStat was a series of Perl scripts first written in 1994 by Roy Fielding. The final version was version 2.01 written in 1996. The download link for that still works and here's an example output of he program. Roy helped write the Apache Web Server.

WWWStat was originally based on a multi-server statistics program called fwgstat-0.035 by Jonathan Magid which, in turn, was heavily based on xferstats by Chris Myers. WWWStat was sponsored in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

There are plaent of servers still carrying the WWWStat output and some are still using it. They can be found by seraching for "World Wide Web Access Statistics" and "generated by wwwstat".

GWStat was written in 1995 by Qiegang Long to add graphics to the output of WWWStat. The program can be downloaded from here or here. It seems to have produced a server side imagemap, as in this example.

WWWStats

WWWStats was a collection of Perl scripts written by Lars Marius Garshol in 1997. The last version was 1.56 written in 1998. The download links still work.

Commercial Programs

Unless these were later released into the Public Domain the downloads for these programs involved registering them. As that is now impossible, I have simply listed them here.

There were also plenty of non-free commercial programs around such as 3DStats, Access Watch, ATStats, FastStats, FlashStats, HBX Analytics, HitList, InSight Reports, InSite, net.Analysis Pro, NetIntellect, NetTracker, Nihuo Web Log Analyzer, Sawmill, SiteTrack, Statbot, SurfReport, SurfStats, WebLog Expert, WebLog Manager Pro, WebSuxess, WebTrak, and Wusage

Speed

One of the few comaprison tests carried out of some of the available log analyzers was carried out by Uppsala university in September 1996. Their comparison only tested the speed of the programs. The programs were run against a 466,987 line log file and in order of fastest to slowest the results were: Getstats 1.3beta, http-analyze v1.9, Analog 1.2.5, http-analyze v1.7, Wusage 3.2, wwwstat 1.0.1, pwebstats 0.99, and W3perl 1.40.

Sources & Resources

A Forensic Web Log Analysis Tool
Access Log Analyzers (Uppsala University) - a huge list of old web log analyzers
Comparison table of the features offered by Analog, AWStats, and Webalizer
Free Web Log Analysers and Web Statistics (The Free Country)
List of web analytics software (Wikipedia)
Log analysis tools software (W3C)
Log File Analysis Tools (1996, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
Log File Analysis Tools (1998, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology)
Overview of Web Site Traffic Analysis Tools (PlanetMike) - Reviews of several "old-school" web log analyzers by Mike Clark
Top Free Web Analytics Software (Pat Research) - Reviews of several "old-school" web log analyzers
Web analytics (Wikipedia)