Plausible Analytics
Privacy-first, cookieless web analytics. The honest GA4 alternative, 1KB script, EU-hosted.
VISIT PLAUSIBLE ANALYTICSKey takeaway: If the brief is a marketing site, a blog, or a SaaS lander and the requirement is honest traffic numbers without a consent banner, Plausible is the default. Pick it over GA4 when readable reports and page weight matter more than Google Ads attribution, and over Umami when you would rather pay than operate a database.
Quick facts
- CategoryPrivacy-first web
- PricingFreemium
- Starts at$9/mo
- LicenseAGPL-3.0
- Created2018
- GitHub stars21k
- Script size<1KB
- CookielessYes
- Self-hostYes
What it is
Plausible is the canonical privacy-first GA4 alternative. Cookieless, GDPR-friendly without a banner, EU-hosted. The dashboard is intentionally simple, pageviews, sources, top pages, devices, no funnels or cohorts. 1KB script weight. AGPL self-host option exists but the cloud product is the default.
Best for
- Marketing sites, blogs, SaaS landers, anyone who needs Lighthouse-friendly analytics
- Teams that want to drop GA4 entirely without a cookie banner
- Sites in EU jurisdictions where GDPR scrutiny is real
When not to pick it
Skip Plausible if you need product analytics, funnels, retention cohorts, user journeys. It is web analytics only, by design.
My take
Plausible is the default I install on every static site I build. The dashboard is honest, the script is tiny, the EU-hosted story makes the legal page short. The only reason not to pick Plausible is if you also need product analytics, pair it with PostHog for that.
Why a sub-kilobyte script is the whole argument
The tracker is under a kilobyte, and on a site where you have already fought for LCP that is the difference between an analytics tag you can defend and one you argue about at every performance review. GA4 ships a much larger payload and pulls its own network waterfall behind it. Plausible is one small request that blocks nothing. The second-order effect matters more. Because there are no cookies and no cross-site identifiers, there is no consent gate standing in front of the measurement, so you are not comparing a full traffic picture against a consented subset. The numbers stay whole. The cost is that the dashboard will not answer product questions. Goals and custom events exist, but there are no retention curves, no cohort analysis, and no user-level paths. If someone asks what a cohort did in week three, that answer does not live here.
Self-hosting the AGPL build versus paying for Cloud
Plausible is AGPL, and the self-hosted community edition is real rather than a crippled teaser. It runs on Postgres plus ClickHouse, which is the honest catch: ClickHouse is not something you leave unattended, and the community edition trails the cloud product on features. I have run both. For a single site, self-hosting costs more in attention than the subscription costs in money, and the cloud instance is EU-hosted, which is usually the reason you picked Plausible in the first place. Self-host when data residency is contractual, when you run dozens of properties and per-site pricing stops making sense, or when a client insists the data never touches a third party. Otherwise pay. If you want the same philosophy on a lighter self-hosted footprint, Umami runs on Postgres alone and is MIT rather than AGPL.
Frequently asked questions
Is Plausible GDPR compliant without a cookie banner?
In practice, yes. Plausible sets no cookies and stores no personal identifiers, so most EU legal reviews conclude no consent banner is required for it specifically, and the data is processed in the EU. The banner decision covers every script on the page though: if you also load GA4, ad pixels, or a chat widget, those still need consent.
Plausible or Fathom?
Close to a coin flip. Same product shape, different jurisdictions: Plausible is EU-hosted and open source under AGPL, Fathom is US-hosted, proprietary, cloud-only, and ships a heavier script. Pick Plausible if EU residency or the self-host option matters, Fathom if the business is US-facing or the team prefers its dashboard. Trial both for a week on real traffic.
Can I self-host Plausible for free?
Yes. The community edition is AGPL-licensed and free to run, with Postgres and ClickHouse behind it. You pay in operations rather than subscription: ClickHouse needs care, upgrades are yours, and the self-hosted build lags the cloud product on newer features. For a single site the subscription is usually cheaper once you price your own time.
Links
Compare Plausible Analytics side-by-side
Similar tools you should also consider
Fathom Analytics
Privacy-first analytics from a tiny independent team. Plausible's closest US-hosted competitor.
Read the take →Simple Analytics
EU-hosted, no-cookies analytics. Even simpler than Plausible, pageviews and referrers only.
Read the take →Umami
Open-source, self-hostable, cookieless. The free Plausible if you can run a Postgres.
Read the take →If Plausible Analytics is your pick, the next conversation is short
The 30-min call is where your analytics choice becomes a real implementation, an event-tracking plan that fits your product, and a privacy story that does not need a 4-screen cookie banner.