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Trench
MITTrench is an open-source analytics pipeline replacing Mixpanel's cloud collection with a self-hosted Kafka and ClickHouse event engine.
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Overview
SaaS teams processing high event volumes face strict data-privacy compliance while hosted analytics bills climb with every tracked profile. Trench resolves this conflict by running an event-collection and query pipeline entirely within self-hosted infrastructure. Operating without tracking cookies, the system ensures user telemetry stays on internal servers under full operator custody.
Why Trench instead of Mixpanel
Mixpanel aggregates behavioral metrics in a managed cloud, but that model transmits customer identities and event payloads outside private infrastructure. For organizations governed by GDPR, HIPAA, or strict European data-residency mandates, third-party analytics vendors introduce significant compliance friction. Trench replaces external event dispatching with an on-premises ingestion pipeline pairing Apache Kafka for queueing with ClickHouse for columnar storage. Because Trench implements the Segment tracking API specification (track, identify, and group), migrating client applications requires updating the ingestion endpoint URL rather than rewriting telemetry code.
The trade-off centers on visualization and operational ownership. Mixpanel delivers an extensive web dashboard with pre-built funnels, retention matrices, and visual cohort builders for non-technical teammates. Trench provides no native analytics portal in its open-source container; instead, it exposes real-time REST endpoints and a direct SQL query interface. Teams that deploy Trench gain physical governance over raw data and eliminate recurring usage fees, but ops leads must provide their own presentation layer by connecting Grafana dashboards or embedding SQL queries into internal tooling.
What it does well
- Ingests thousands of events per second on a single virtual server by queueing payloads through Apache Kafka before writing to ClickHouse.
- Maintains compliance with GDPR and PECR through a cookieless architecture that gives teams direct SQL control to inspect, rectify, or purge records.
- Accepts standard Segment API payloads, allowing development teams to reuse existing client SDKs and tracking code without changing schemas.
- Executes real-time analytical SQL queries across raw columnar tables, returning aggregated user counts within milliseconds.
- Dispatches event updates to external systems and automation tools through customizable outbound HTTP webhooks.
