Plausible

Instead of Google Analytics

A tide table gives you a few numbers that tell you whether to go out, and Plausible aims to be that for a website. Its repository describes open source, privacy-first web analytics and a cookie-free alternative to Google Analytics, and the project says it uses no cookies or persistent identifiers and stores no personal data or IP addresses, with its stats aggregated and anonymous. That is Plausible's own description and we have not tested it.

Plausible scores a 4 on every question. The company, Plausible Insights OÜ, calls itself independent and funded only by its subscribers, and runs its cloud service on EU-owned infrastructure in Germany. The Community Edition is free under the AGPL v3 with an MIT licensed tracker, you run the server, the backups and the security yourself, and the repository has about 28,700 stars.

The self-hosted edition is released twice a year and leaves out funnels, ecommerce revenue goals, single sign-on and the sites API, and help comes from the community only. When it launched in February 2024 the company said it had considered the Business Source License and the Server Side Public License and turned both down because the Open Source Initiative does not recognise them, and that outside contributors would sign a contributor license agreement. We did not read the price of the cloud plans.

Owning it means a server of your own to keep updated twice a year, with funnels and revenue goals left to the paid cloud. Scores are our reading of public sources.

What stands out

• Cookie-free analytics from an independent company, in the cloud or self-hosted
• Community Edition is AGPL-3.0 and leaves out funnels, revenue goals and single sign-on
• Released twice a year, with community-only support

For comparison, we also reviewed Google Analytics (12/30) as a benchmark.