OwnTracks Recorder
Store and access data published by OwnTracks location tracking apps.
Maintained, but at a slower pace than the leaders in its category.
Commit activity more than 16% of tracked projects; popularity more than 38%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
| Stars | 1.2k |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 1.0.4 · 8 Sept 2026 |
| Repo updated | 8 Sept 2026 |
| Licence | GPL-2.0 |
| Built with | C, Lua, deb, Docker |
Is OwnTracks Recorder actively maintained?
Over the last 11 months the project absorbed 39 commits, of which 35 arrived in the most recent quarter — roughly 12 commits a month.
Activity is accelerating: the last quarter carried 1650% more commits than the one before it.
The most recent tagged release, 1.0.4, shipped within the last month — a current, installable version exists today.
Note that OwnTracks Recorder depends on a third-party service to work fully. It is self-hosted, but not self-contained: if that external service changes its terms or disappears, your instance is affected.
OwnTracks Recorder ranks #14 of 20 tracked maps and global positioning system (gps) projects. Several better-maintained options exist in the same category — they are listed below.
What OwnTracks Recorder actually does
OwnTracks Recorder is a lightweight backend service designed to receive, store, and serve location data published by the OwnTracks mobile tracking clients. It persists incoming telemetry so that you can query and visualise historical geographic coordinates over time. Written in C and Lua, it provides a dedicated server-side endpoint for self-hosters managing their own location logs.
Best fit: It is a practical choice if you already use the OwnTracks mobile apps and want a private, self-hosted repository for your location history without relying on third-party cloud services.
Worth knowing: The software has a modest maintenance profile, meaning you may need to rely on community resources or self-diagnose issues if you encounter bugs.
Deployment notes
You will typically run this via Docker or a native package, ensuring you configure persistent storage for your location data and a reverse proxy to handle secure TLS connections.
Links
Alternatives to OwnTracks Recorder
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