I Built a 510-Byte Analytics Script. Here's How (and Why).

Most analytics scripts are massive. Google Analytics loads ~82 KB of JavaScript. Even privacy-focused alternatives like Plausible (~1 KB) and Umami (~2 KB) are significantly larger than they need to be. I built Fairlytics with a tracking script that's 510 bytes gzipped. Here's the technical story of why and how. Why small matters Every byte of JavaScript your page loads has a cost: Parse time on mobile devices Network transfer on slow connections Render-blocking potential Core Web Vitals impact For an analytics script that runs on every page of your site, these costs multiply across every single page view. The privacy pipeline When a visitor loads a page with Fairlytics, here's what happens: The 510-byte script sends a POST request with 4 fields: site ID, page URL, referrer, and page title Server receives the request along with the IP address and User-Agent (standard HTTP) The IP is used for an in-memory GeoIP lookup → produces a 2-letter country code → IP is discarded (never stored) T