Plausible
PaidSimple privacy-friendly web analytics
About Plausible
Plausible is the privacy-first GA alternative that actually has a good product. Self-hostable, no cookies, GDPR-compliant by design — one script tag and you're tracking. EU Cloud pricing: $9/month up to 10K pageviews, $19/month up to 100K, $69/month up to 1M, $149/month up to 10M. Self-hosted version is fully open source (AGPL). The dashboard is one clean page: traffic overview, top pages, sources, countries, and devices. No sampled data, no 14-month retention limits, no consent banners required in most EU jurisdictions because no PII is collected. The real limitation is it's pageview analytics, not product analytics — custom events work but there's no funnel builder, cohort analysis, or user-level tracking. It's not competing with Mixpanel; it's the 'I want to know how many people visited my blog without spying on them' tool. Goals and Funnels have been added and are decent for basic conversion tracking. If you run Kubernetes, the self-hosted Docker path is well-documented and straightforward. Switched from GA4 by thousands of teams after the Universal Analytics sunset.
Key Features
Pricing Plans
Growth
- 10K pageviews/month
- Unlimited websites
- Goal conversions
- Email reports
Business
- 100K pageviews/month
- Revenue tracking
- Funnels
- Custom properties
Enterprise
- 10M+ pageviews
- Priority support
- Custom retention
- SLA
Pros
- No cookies means no consent banners needed
- Extremely lightweight under 1KB script
- Open source and self-hostable
- Clean dashboard with essential metrics only
- GDPR CCPA and PECR compliant by default
- Transparent company with public roadmap
Cons
- No user-level tracking or cohorting
- Limited compared to GA4 for power users
- No funnel analysis on basic plan
- Small ecosystem of integrations
- Self-hosting requires technical knowledge
- No free tier paid from day one
Best For
- GDPR-compliant analytics without consent banners (no PII collected)
- content sites and blogs that need traffic data, not product analytics
- teams tired of GA4 complexity who want a single clean dashboard
- self-hosters who want to keep analytics data on their own infrastructure
Not Ideal For
- product analytics needs (no user-level tracking, no cohort analysis)
- ad attribution tracking (no UTM correlation at user level)
- teams that need free tier (paid-only after 30-day trial)
Potential Deal Breakers
- no user-level tracking by design (limits depth of analysis)
- no funnel analysis or cohort builder
- paid-only after 30-day trial ($9/month minimum)
Data & Privacy
Privacy-focused analytics built to be GDPR compliant without cookie banners. No personal data collected, no cross-site tracking, no fingerprinting. EU-hosted by default on Hetzner in Germany. Fully open-source and self-hostable. All data owned by you and exportable via API. No third-party data sharing.
Who Is This For?
Hands-on tested May 2026
Signup Experience
Email signup with 30-day free trial, no credit card needed. Add a lightweight script tag to your site and stats appear within minutes. Dashboard is a single scrollable page -- pageviews, bounce rate, top pages, referrers, and goals. No cookie banner required because no personal data is collected.
For Home Users
Ideal for personal blogs and portfolio sites where you want basic traffic data without tracking visitors. $9/mo after trial is reasonable for a clean, honest analytics view. Self-hosting on a VPS is well-documented for those who want zero cost.
For Business Users
GDPR compliant out of the box with no cookie consent UI needed -- a meaningful operational simplification. Lightweight script (under 1KB) does not slow page loads. Lacks funnel analysis, cohort tracking, and user-level data by design. Right for businesses that want simple traffic metrics; not a replacement for PostHog or Mixpanel if behavioral analytics matter.
Our Verdict
Plausible does one thing well — showing where your traffic comes from without privacy violations. For content sites and marketing pages, it's a better default than GA4 in 2024. The moment you need to understand what users do after they land on your product, you need PostHog or Mixpanel instead.