Trench is an open-source analytics infrastructure designed for tracking events and performing real-time analysis of application data at scale. The system is built on top of high-performance data technologies including Apache Kafka and ClickHouse, which allows it to ingest and process very large volumes of events while maintaining fast query performance. It was originally developed to solve scaling challenges in product analytics systems where traditional relational databases become inefficient as event tables grow. The platform enables developers to collect events such as page views, user actions, and behavioral metrics while storing them in a column-oriented analytics database optimized for time-series workloads. By combining streaming ingestion with fast analytical queries, the system supports use cases such as product analytics dashboards, observability pipelines, and machine learning data preparation.
Features
- High-throughput event tracking built on Apache Kafka and ClickHouse
- Real-time querying and analytics for large event datasets
- Segment-compatible tracking APIs including Track Identify and Group
- Single Docker deployment for simplified infrastructure setup
- Webhook integrations for exporting data to external services
- Privacy-aware design supporting GDPR-compliant event tracking