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How we rank & scoreGoogle's hosted web analytics, which sends your visitors' data to Google in exchange for a free dashboard.
Plausible is our top pick — Lightweight, cookieless, privacy-first analytics. We compare all 4 options below, with honest trade-offs.
Jump to the full comparison →Free — you pay with your visitors' data and a heavy tracking script
It hands visitor data to Google, needs cookie-consent banners under privacy law, and adds page weight. Privacy-first analytics are lighter, cookieless, and self-hostable.
| Alternative | License | Self-host | Pricing | Sovereignty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible★ | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | Free self-host (Community Edition); paid cloud | 92 |
| Umami | MIT | Yes | Free self-host; paid cloud | 90 |
| Matomo | GPL-3.0 | Yes | Free self-host; paid cloud | 86 |
| Fathom Analytics | Proprietary | No | From $15/month (up to 100k pageviews); every feature on every plan; 30-day free trial | 40 |
Lightweight, cookieless, privacy-first analytics.
There is no single best answer — it depends on what you are actually trying to do.
Just tell me the best Google Analytics alternative
Plausible92
Our top pick — the highest Sovereignty Score at 92, and the one we would choose ourselves.
Plausible vs Umami →I have no budget — is there a genuinely free one?
Umami90
Open source under MIT. Free self-host; paid cloud
Umami vs Plausible →It is just me — I do not want to run a server
Matomo86
Offers a hosted option, so you can start without infrastructure. Free self-host; paid cloud
Matomo vs Plausible →Lightweight, cookieless, privacy-first analytics.
Plausible is a simple, privacy-friendly analytics tool with a tiny script and no cookies, so you usually skip the consent banner. Self-host the open-source Community Edition or use the hosted plan.
Simple, fast, self-hostable web analytics.
Umami is an MIT-licensed, privacy-focused analytics app you host yourself, offering the essential metrics with a light footprint and a clean UI.
The full-featured, self-hosted GA replacement.
Matomo is a mature, GPL-licensed analytics platform that matches most of Google Analytics feature-for-feature while letting you keep 100% of the data on your own server.
Privacy-first analytics with no cookie banner — the easy hosted pick.
Fathom is a simple, privacy-first analytics service and the closest easy replacement for Google Analytics: one script, a clean dashboard, and no cookie-consent banner because it sets no cookies and collects no personal data (GDPR/CCPA compliant out of the box, with optional EU-isolation routing). It's a paid hosted service rather than open-source, so it's here as the honest “just make it work” pick alongside the self-hostable champions — you trade self-hosting for zero maintenance.
Entry last verified 2026-07-04. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.
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