AWStats analyzes web-server log files and turns their requests into reports on visitors, pages, traffic sources, browsers, errors, and more. It remains usable for existing deployments, but the project says it is no longer actively developed and recommends Matomo Log Analytics for modern, supported log analytics. For a new installation, weigh that maintenance status before choosing AWStats.
What AWStats is
AWStats (Advanced Web Statistics) is open-source software licensed under GPLv3 or later. Rather than collecting visits with a JavaScript tag, it reads log files generated by a web, FTP, mail, or streaming server and builds statistics from their recorded requests. It can be run from the command line or served through a web-server CGI interface. The AWStats project repository describes it as a full-featured server log analyzer.
What AWStats measures
Reports depend on the log fields AWStats can read and the options configured for the analysis. The project lists these kinds of statistics:
- Audience and activity: visits, unique visitors, visit duration, last visits, authenticated users, and traffic by day and hour.
- Location and infrastructure: domains, countries, hosts, unresolved IP addresses, and load-balancer cluster reports.
- Content and navigation: entry and exit pages, most-viewed pages, file types, downloads, and compression.
- Discovery and referrals: search engines, keyphrases, keywords, and bookmark additions.
- Technical details: browsers, operating systems, screen sizes, browser capability ratios, and HTTP errors.
- Automated or unwanted requests: robots and worm attacks.
These are log-derived measures, not a guarantee that every deployment can report every item. The server must record the necessary data, and AWStats must be configured to parse it correctly. The project feature list describes the available report categories.
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Which log formats AWStats supports
The AWStats FAQ lists Apache common and combined logs, IIS W3C logs, WebStar, and numerous other web, proxy, WAP, and streaming formats. It also documents selected FTP, syslog, and mail logs. Custom LogFormat definitions are supported when the log includes the information AWStats needs.
Before processing real traffic, match the AWStats configuration to the actual log format. Also check the log’s time zone, rotation and compression behavior, and whether the fields needed for your reports are present. A format mismatch or missing data can make results incomplete or unusable.
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How to install and run AWStats
The official documentation organizes setup into three stages: install and configure AWStats, process logs to build or update its statistics database, then generate and read reports. A working setup needs a server log AWStats can read, an operating system that can run Perl scripts, and Perl’s Encode module. To display reports through CGI, the web server must also be able to execute CGI scripts. See the official AWStats documentation for configuration details.
- Install and configure: Install AWStats and its Perl prerequisites, then configure the log location and format, time zone, rotation handling, and any exclusions. The Apache-compatible setup helper is
perl awstats_configure.pl. - Process the logs: Run the configured update process to build or refresh the statistics database from the logs. Confirm that AWStats can read the files and that the resulting totals look plausible for the period analyzed.
- Read reports: Generate reports from the command line or make them available through CGI. Restrict access to reports if they expose information about visitors, URLs, or authenticated activity.
For reliable comparisons over time, document the exact LogFormat, exclusions, time-zone setting, and rotation behavior. Changes to those settings can change the reports even when the site’s traffic has not changed.
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Is AWStats still maintained?
AWStats 8.0 is listed as the last stable release, dated 2025-08-26, on the official project site. That site says version 8 will be the original author’s last release. A November 2025 notice in the project repository says AWStats is no longer actively developed and recommends Matomo Log Analytics as a modern, privacy-respecting, supported option.
That status does not by itself establish whether a particular package or installation is secure or supported by its distributor. If you keep an existing deployment, pin the known-good package, limit report access, and verify security support for the package and environment you actually use.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Should you choose AWStats or an alternative?
For an existing installation that produces useful reports, continuing to run AWStats may be practical if you can maintain its environment and verify security support. For a new analytics deployment, compare maintained options first; Matomo Log Analytics is the replacement named by the AWStats project. Confirm the alternative’s supported log formats, update workflow, privacy and data-ownership model, and migration requirements before putting it into production.
AWStats and other analytics tools can report different totals from the same traffic. Log parsers may apply different rules to visits, bots, exclusions, and time zones, so figures are not necessarily directly comparable. If you migrate, preserve your AWStats configuration and record the reporting definitions you rely on; use those details to interpret differences rather than treating a change in totals as a change in traffic.
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