Download Tracker
What it is
Download Tracker counts how many times each of your files gets downloaded, without the database cost that usually comes with it.
A lot of the download-tracking tools out there write a new database row, or even a whole element, for every single download. On a busy site that table balloons into millions of rows and starts to hurt. On a statically cached site it can also mean the cache is refreshed constantly. Download Tracker takes the opposite approach: it keeps one running counter per file and increments it atomically. A file downloaded a million times is still a single row.
It's also built for modern, cache-first Craft sites. If you run full-page static caching such as Blitz, you'll know that a cached page never touches PHP, so anything that tries to "count on page load" simply never fires. Download Tracker sidesteps this entirely by counting on a lightweight background request that static caches always let through.
What you get
- One counter per file. No per-download row explosion, no race conditions.
- Daily breakdown. A compact per-day rollup lets you see trends over time, and old rows are pruned automatically. Every file has a detail screen with its day-by-day chart, table and CSV export.
- People and crawlers, told apart. Count crawler downloads separately from human ones, ignore them, or block them with a 403.
- Works with static caching. Counting happens on a background request.
- Zero-touch setup. It starts counting your existing download links with no template changes.
- Optional managed download links for gated, private, remote, or force-"Save as..." downloads, using a signed, tamper-proof URL.
- Reporting built in. A searchable, sortable Downloads screen in the control panel, CSV export, saved reports, and a "Top Downloads" dashboard widget.
- Import from Link Vault. Bring your download history across before you uninstall it. See Moving from Link Vault.
Where to next
- New here? Start with Installation, then How it works.
- Want counts without touching templates? See Automatic click tracking.
- Need a counted link for a gated or private file? See Managed download links.
- Reading numbers in your templates? See the Twig API.
Still on Craft 4?
This documentation covers the Craft 5 release. If you're on Craft 4, use the craft-4-support branch, which runs on Craft 4 and Craft 5 alike. Everything in these docs applies there too, aside from the Craft version requirement.
A note on this project
AI tools helped with parts of the development process and with drafting this documentation. The code has been reviewed, tested, and implemented by developers, and the documentation has been checked against the plugins themselves.