Will there be differences in the stats or data between AWStats and Matomo?

When analysing the same log files, Matomo and AWStats should report broadly similar core metrics (visits, page views, bandwidth, etc.), but there are some differences in definitions and capabilities to be aware of.

• Bots and Spiders: By default, Matomo excludes bots (search engine crawlers, etc.) from visitor statistics. AWStats would list bot visits separately in its reports. In Matomo, those bot hits won’t show up in your main visit count at all (unless you configure Matomo to track bots). This usually results in Matomo reporting fewer total visits than AWStats if your site had a lot of bot traffic, because Matomo is focusing on human visits only by default.

• Unique Visitors calculation: AWStats typically calculates unique visitors per period based on IP+UserAgent or cookies (if configured). Matomo also calculates unique visitors, but if you use log import, it’s similarly based on IP and other heuristics. Minor differences in how returning visitors are identified may occur, but generally it’s comparable.

• Page views vs Hits: AWStats shows Pages and Hits separately (where hits include all file requests like images, and pages are HTML/page requests). Matomo’s default focus is on page views (HTML page requests). When importing logs, Matomo by default will count page views for HTML pages and count other requests (images, CSS, etc.) as download or simply ignore them, depending on configuration. By default, the import_logs script ignores static files like images/CSS to avoid inflating page view counts (since these aren’t actual page views). AWStats, on the other hand, would list hits (including images) for bandwidth stats but not count them as page views. Matomo will still track overall bandwidth if you enable that during import, but its reports are generally more focused on page content.

• Referrers and Keywords: Both AWStats and Matomo parse referrer URLs and search engine queries. Matomo keeps an updated database of search engines and is actively maintained, so it may recognise newer search engines or updated query parameter patterns that AWStats (if outdated) might miss. This should be a positive, as you might get more accurate or comprehensive referrer info in Matomo.

• Geolocation: AWStats often used geoIP plugins for country/city. Matomo also supports geolocation (via GeoIP2 database or other providers). You’ll want to configure geolocation in Matomo (it’s straightforward: Matomo can download a free GeoIP database) to get country and city reports. Once configured, the geo reports should be similar in concept.

• Missing fields (screen resolution, etc.): If you use purely log analytics, some data points are not available. For example, screen resolution, page title, or whether the user had certain browser plugins cannot be known from server logs (AWStats had a limited ability to capture screen size and plugins if you inserted a special JavaScript snippet on your pages, but that wasn’t commonly done). With Matomo log import, by default you’ll also not have those particular metrics, just like AWStats in typical use wouldn’t. If such metrics are important, you can combine with Matomo’s JS tracker for those specific insights. But for most AWStats users, this isn’t a big concern, as the core analytics (who visited, when, what pages, from where) are all there.

• Real-time data: AWStats typically ran periodically (e.g., daily). Matomo can show you data in real-time (if using the JS tracker) or near-real-time with logs (depending on how often you import). So, you might notice you have up-to-the-minute stats in Matomo if configured that way, which is a new capability compared to AWStats.

• Interface and aggregation: Matomo’s interface might present data slightly differently. For example, AWStats would show a Monthly history table with totals per month. In Matomo, you can select a month or year and see a summary, or use the Overview to see sparkline trends. Matomo also allows custom date ranges. These differences aren’t about data discrepancies, but about how you access the information.

• Accuracy and Over-reporting: In some cases, log analysis can over-report visits if, for example, a single person behind a NAT or corporate proxy hits your site. AWStats might count those as multiple unique visitors if it’s just IP-based. Matomo with log import has similar limitations (since it’s also reading logs). If you use the JS tracker, Matomo can avoid some of those issues by using first-party cookies to better distinguish visitors. But as long as you’re comparing AWStats and Matomo both using logs, the accuracy should be on par. You may actually find Matomo’s bot filtering improves the accuracy of human visitor counts.

• Customisation: AWStats had a lot of configuration options via its config file (to include/exclude certain URLs, merge hosts, etc.). Matomo’s approach to customisation is via the UI or config and plugins. Most common needs (like excluding certain IPs, or ignoring query parameters) can be done in Matomo’s settings or via the import script options. It’s different in execution but capable of achieving similar results (for instance, you can tell the import script to exclude certain requests or files you don’t want to track).

After migrating, expect the core metrics to line up closely, with some differences primarily due to Matomo’s filtering of bots and potentially more conservative counting of page views (ignoring non-page hits). You’ll also gain a lot of new abilities with Matomo.