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Alternatives to Google Analytics
Count your visitors and see what they read without handing their trail to an advertising company.
Ranked by score out of 30, most convivial first.
GoatCounter
Web analytics that counts pages and visits without tracking people, hosted for free or run yourself.
Plausible
Small, cookie-free web analytics from an independent company, in the cloud or on your own server.
Umami
Open source web analytics for traffic, campaigns and conversions, with no cookies, in the cloud or on your own server.
Matomo
A full web analytics platform you can run on your own server or buy as a hosted service.
Fathom Analytics
Paid, cookie-free website analytics from an independent Canadian company.
Simple Analytics
Privacy-friendly website analytics with a free plan for hobby sites and paid plans from $20 a month.
PostHog
A product analytics toolbox you can self-host in its open source form, with a hosted cloud for most companies.
For comparison
The big names these tools are measured against. We review them as benchmarks, so they sit outside the directory.
About these tools
Most site owners want a small set of answers: how many people came, which pages they read and where they arrived from. Google Analytics gives those and more, and its help pages say it collects first-party cookies, device and browser data and the IP address, with cookies that last two years by default. GoatCounter is open source, adds about 3.5 KB to a page and can be hosted for free or run as a single binary, and Plausible and Umami are open source tools that say they use no cookies.
Matomo is a full platform you can run on your own server, Fathom Analytics and Simple Analytics are paid hosted services, and PostHog is a bigger toolbox for product analytics that suits small self-hosted setups and hobbyists in its own docs.
How to choose
Decide who looks after the server. If you want none, a paid service such as Fathom or Simple Analytics, or the free hosted GoatCounter, is the short route. If you want your data on your own machine, GoatCounter needs the least, Umami needs Node.js and PostgreSQL and Plausible's Community Edition leaves out some features the cloud has.
Frequently asked questions
What is an open source alternative to Google Analytics?
GoatCounter, Plausible, Umami and Matomo are all open source, and each can be run on your own server.
Is there a free alternative to Google Analytics?
GoatCounter offers a free hosted service and can be self-hosted without restrictions, and Simple Analytics has a free plan for hobby sites with one month of history and a badge on your site.
Which alternative needs no cookie banner?
Fathom Analytics says it does not use cookies, and Plausible and Umami say they use none. Whether you need a banner is a legal question for your own site, so check it with someone who knows your rules.