What happened in the session
Pages visited, events fired, time spent. No recordings, no privacy risk. You still get the full picture.
- No session recordings
- Privacy-first by design
- Entry-to-exit visibility
- Sessions linked to events
What is session tracking?
A session is the window of activity between a user arriving on your site and leaving. It starts with an entry page, includes every page view and event along the way, and ends when the user goes idle or closes the tab.
Most analytics tools either give you too little (aggregated page-view counts with no sense of flow) or too much (full session recordings that raise privacy concerns and take hours to review). OpenPanel sits in the middle: you get a structured timeline of what happened in each session, without recording a single pixel of the user's screen.
For every session, OpenPanel captures:
- Entry page and exit page - where the user started and where they left
- Pages visited in order - the path through your site or app
- Events fired - signups, clicks, feature usage, or any custom event
- Session duration - how long the session lasted
- Referrer and UTM parameters - how the user got there
- Device, browser, and location - context without fingerprinting
This means you can answer questions like:
- What pages do users visit before signing up?
- Do users from organic search behave differently than paid traffic?
- How long are sessions for users who convert vs. those who don't?
Unlike session replay tools (Hotjar, FullStory, LogRocket), there are no recordings to watch, no PII captured on screen, and no consent banners needed for video replay. You get the analytical value of sessions without the privacy overhead.
Sessions in OpenPanel connect directly to events and user profiles. Every event belongs to a session, and every session belongs to a user. This means funnels, retention, and user timelines all have session context built in.
What you get with session tracking
Structured session data that answers real questions-without the privacy cost of recordings.
Entry and exit pages
See where users land and where they leave. Identify your strongest entry points and the pages that lose visitors.
Page flow per session
View the ordered sequence of pages a user visited in a session. Understand navigation patterns without watching a recording.
Events within a session
Every event (signup, click, purchase) is tied to a session. See exactly what a user did and in what order.
Session duration and engagement
Measure how long sessions last and how many pages or events they include. Spot high-engagement and bounce sessions.
Referrer and UTM attribution
Know how users arrived-organic search, paid campaign, direct link-and compare session quality across sources.
Device and location context
Capture browser, OS, and approximate location for each session. No fingerprinting-just standard request headers.
How session tracking works
Sessions are created automatically from the events you already send.
Events create sessions
When a user triggers their first event (page view, click, etc.), OpenPanel starts a session. No extra tracking code needed-sessions are derived from your events.
Activity is grouped automatically
Subsequent events from the same user are grouped into the active session. If the user goes idle (30 minutes by default), the session ends and a new one begins on the next interaction.
Sessions connect to everything
Each session links to the user profile, the events fired, and the pages visited. This means funnels, retention, and user timelines all include session context.
Who uses session tracking
Teams that need to understand user journeys without the overhead of session replays.
Product teams
Understand how users navigate your product. See the page flow and events in a session to identify friction points-without watching hours of recordings.
Support and success teams
When a user reports an issue, pull up their recent sessions to see what pages they visited and what events they triggered. Context without asking "can you describe what you did?"
Privacy-conscious teams
Get session-level insights without recording user screens. No PII in screenshots, no video consent banners, no GDPR headaches from replay data.
Related features
Explore more capabilities that work together with this feature.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about session tracking with OpenPanel.
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