{"id":31165,"date":"2026-06-12T16:20:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/?p=31165"},"modified":"2026-06-12T16:40:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:40:43","slug":"what-is-tracearr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/what-is-tracearr\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Tracearr? Self-Hosted Media-Server Monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Tracearr is a free, open-source, self-hosted monitoring platform for Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby. It pulls every stream across your media servers into one dashboard, shows you who is watching what and from where in real time, and uses automated rules to flag likely account sharing. Because it&#8217;s self-hosted, your viewing data stays on your own hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-advanced-heading uagb-block-cb541484\"><h2 class=\"uagb-heading-text\">What Does Tracearr Do?<\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>It turns the scattered activity of one or more media servers into a single, readable picture. The main things it gives you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A unified dashboard across Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby \u2014 no more switching between separate tools.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A real-time view of active streams: who&#8217;s watching, what they&#8217;re playing, the device, the quality, and whether it&#8217;s transcoding.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A live world map showing where each stream is coming from, with geolocation detail.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Account-sharing detection through automated rules \u2014 for example, the same account streaming from two distant cities at once.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Per-user profiles with session history, known devices, locations, and a trust score that builds over time.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Library analytics: storage use, quality distribution, duplicate detection, and what people actually watch.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Alerts via Discord and webhooks, plus the ability to stop a stream directly from the interface.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-advanced-heading uagb-block-59081122\"><h2 class=\"uagb-heading-text\">How Tracearr Works<\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Tracearr connects to the APIs of your Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby servers and watches their activity continuously. For Plex it uses Server-Sent Events so new streams appear almost instantly. It stores the resulting history in a time-series database (built on PostgreSQL) with a Redis queue handling background work, which is what lets it answer questions about patterns over time \u2014 not just show you the current moment. Its sharing-detection rules then look for tell-tale signals such as impossible travel (a viewer apparently moving between cities faster than physically possible), simultaneous streams from different locations, and unusual device or concurrency patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-advanced-heading uagb-block-09fba05c\"><h2 class=\"uagb-heading-text\">Tracearr vs Tautulli and Jellystat<\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;ve run a media server before, you&#8217;ve probably met Tautulli or Jellystat. Tautulli is the long-standing analytics tool for Plex, and Jellystat covers Jellyfin and Emby. Both do watch history, stats, and session monitoring well \u2014 but each is tied to its own ecosystem, so running multiple server types means running multiple dashboards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tracearr&#8217;s two differentiators are that it handles all three platforms in one place, and that it adds active account-sharing detection on top of the analytics rather than leaving you to read the logs yourself. It can also import your existing history from Tautulli or Jellystat, so you don&#8217;t start from zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-advanced-heading uagb-block-b1871c61\"><h2 class=\"uagb-heading-text\">What You Need to Run It<\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Tracearr is designed to run in Docker, and it&#8217;s a multi-container application. To self-host it you&#8217;ll need:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A server to run it on \u2014 a small VPS is plenty for a home setup.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Docker and Docker Compose installed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Its bundled data services: a PostgreSQL-based time-series database and a Redis instance (the official Compose file wires these up for you).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Network access to your Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby servers so Tracearr can read their activity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-advanced-heading uagb-block-e2b3f002\"><h2 class=\"uagb-heading-text\">Why Run Tracearr on Contabo<\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Tracearr is a lightweight, always-on workload \u2014 it sits quietly collecting data and only needs to be reachable, not powerful. That makes it a natural fit for a cost-effective virtual private server. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Contabo&#8217;s Core VPS line gives you strong RAM-per-Euro value with enough headroom for the app plus its database and Redis containers, full root access to install Docker, and EU data-residency options so your viewers&#8217; data stays in a jurisdiction you choose. For a DB-heavy setup you can step up to the NVMe-backed Plus line for faster storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-advanced-heading uagb-block-4c0be96c\"><h2 class=\"uagb-heading-text\">FAQ: Tracearr<\/h2><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"schema-faq wp-block-yoast-faq-block\"><div class=\"schema-faq-section\" id=\"faq-question-1780493308194\"><strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">What is Tracearr used for?<\/strong> <p class=\"schema-faq-answer\">Tracearr monitors Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby media servers from one dashboard. It shows real-time streams and viewer locations, keeps watch-history analytics, and uses automated rules to detect likely account sharing \u2014 helping server owners understand and control how their accounts are being used.<\/p> <\/div> <div class=\"schema-faq-section\" id=\"faq-question-1780493318808\"><strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">Is Tracearr free?<\/strong> <p class=\"schema-faq-answer\">Yes. Tracearr is free and open-source, licensed under AGPL-3.0, with no premium tiers or subscriptions. You self-host it on your own hardware, so the only cost is the server you run it on. (Optional companion mobile apps are sold separately, but the platform itself is free.)<\/p> <\/div> <div class=\"schema-faq-section\" id=\"faq-question-1780493334961\"><strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">Does Tracearr work with Jellyfin and Emby?<\/strong> <p class=\"schema-faq-answer\">Yes. Tracearr supports Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby together in a single dashboard, which is one of its main advantages over single-platform tools. You can connect multiple servers of different types to one Tracearr instance and see combined or per-server stats.<\/p> <\/div> <div class=\"schema-faq-section\" id=\"faq-question-1780493348470\"><strong class=\"schema-faq-question\">Is Tracearr a Tautulli alternative?<\/strong> <p class=\"schema-faq-answer\">Yes. Tracearr is a multi-server alternative to Tautulli (Plex-only) and Jellystat (Jellyfin\/Emby). It covers all three platforms at once and adds account-sharing detection on top of standard analytics. It can also import your existing Tautulli or Jellystat history when you switch.<\/p> <\/div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tracearr is a free, open-source, self-hosted monitoring platform for Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby. It pulls every stream across your media servers into one dashboard, shows you who is watching what and from where in real time, and uses automated rules to flag likely account sharing. Because it&#8217;s self-hosted, your viewing data stays on your own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[4478,1471,4476,4475,4477,602,4474,4472,4479,4473],"ppma_author":[4285],"class_list":["post-31165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tutorials","tag-account-sharing-detection","tag-docker","tag-emby","tag-jellyfin","tag-media-server-monitoring","tag-open-source","tag-plex","tag-self-hosted","tag-tautulli-alternative","tag-tracearr"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jie Guo","author_link":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/author\/jieguo\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Tracearr is a free, open-source, self-hosted monitoring platform for Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby. It pulls every stream across your media servers into one dashboard, shows you who is watching what and from where in real time, and uses automated rules to flag likely account sharing. Because it&#8217;s self-hosted, your viewing data stays on your own&hellip;","authors":[{"term_id":4285,"user_id":78,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jieguo","display_name":"Jie Guo","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4e0d981b06988d6d456834e9d55bc9e713e918fa8444325543d14f448154106b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Guo","first_name":"Jie","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31166,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31165\/revisions\/31166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31165"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contabo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=31165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}