Trench

Trench is an open-source, self-hosted web app and server that provides an event tracking system for real-time analytics. It is designed to handle large event volumes and is deployed as a server application, typically via Docker and Docker Compose. The system serves as a backend infrastructure for capturing user interactions and streaming them into a queryable database.

The software functions as a specialized pipeline for capturing and querying user events. It is built to be no-cookie and compliant with GDPR and PECR, ensuring that users maintain full control over the access, rectification, and deletion of their data. It is intended for organizations that need to scale their event tracking without relying on third-party proprietary platforms.

Key features

• Compatibility with API for Track, Group, and Identify calls
• Deployment via a single production-ready Docker image
• Processing capacity of thousands of events per second on a single node
• Real-time data querying capabilities
• Webhook integration to connect data to other destinations
• Support for Kafka authentication using SASL and SSL
• Direct execution of raw SQL queries for data analysis
• MIT License for open-source usage

Trench uses a backend architecture based on Apache Kafka for event streaming and ClickHouse for high-speed storage and analysis. It provides a set of API endpoints for sending events and querying results, allowing developers to interact with the data programmatically. The system can be integrated with external visualization tools like Grafana to build custom analytics dashboards. The infrastructure supports complex Kafka configurations, including SSL/TLS certificates and various SASL mechanisms such as SCRAM-SHA-256 and SCRAM-SHA-512.

It is positioned as a high-performance analytics infrastructure for teams requiring full ownership of their event data and the ability to perform raw SQL analysis on their event streams.