Why Janus exists.
Google Analytics is an incredible tool. It's also wildly overpowered for most projects. We'd open it up, get lost in 40 tabs of reports, and close it without learning anything useful.
The Origin Story
A rock hammer, not a sledgehammer.
Janus started because we kept opening Google Analytics on side projects and closing it five minutes later without learning anything.
GA is powerful, but it's designed for marketing teams running enterprise campaigns. For a developer who just wants to know what's happening on their site, it's overkill.
We wanted something that answered simple questions immediately: Is anyone using this? What are they doing? Where did they come from?
The Philosophy
Designed for sensemaking, not dashboard hoarding.
The design is heavily influenced by Edward Tufte's work on information display. The core principle: maximize the data, minimize the chrome.
Tables over charts. A table with 20 rows of referrer data communicates more in less space than a bar chart showing the top 5. If a number tells the story, don't wrap it in a donut chart.
Most analytics dashboards optimize for "wow" not "so what." The pretty chart makes you feel like you're learning something. The boring table actually teaches you. We built for the "so what."
What We Believe
A few things we learned.
One dashboard, not forty
Page views, referrers, geo, device breakdown — the stuff you actually check. Structured so it makes sense the first time you open it.
Developer-first
Drop in a script tag or use the SDK. API keys, not tracking pixels. The tracking script is under 1KB.
Respectful by default
No invasive fingerprinting. No third-party data resale. No session replay or heatmaps. You decide what to track and how long to keep it.
Signal over noise
No charts for the sake of charts. No vanity metrics. Just the data you actually make decisions with.
The Stack
Built with tools we trust.
React + Fastify + Postgres + Redis. A straightforward stack chosen for reliability, not hype.
See for yourself.
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