Plausible

Plausible Analytics is a privacy-first, open-source web analytics tool that reports traffic without cookies, without persistent identifiers, and without cross-site or cross-device tracking, which means a site running it needs no cookie banner for analytics. The problem it solves is that Google Analytics is heavy, complicated, and legally awkward in Europe. Plausible states its script is 54 times smaller than Google Analytics, so every visitor downloads 135KB less JavaScript. The dashboard is a single page rather than a reporting suite: visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, visit duration, top sources, top pages, countries, devices, and goals, all visible without building a report. The code is public and auditable on GitHub, and you can run it yourself if you prefer not to use the hosted service. Data residency is a deliberate selling point. Plausible is made and hosted in the EU, and states that data is processed exclusively on servers owned and operated by European companies and never leaves the EU. Pricing starts with a 30-day free trial that does not require a credit card. At the 10,000 monthly pageview level, Starter is $9/month or $108/year and covers 1 site with 3-year data retention, the dashboard, email and Slack reports, Google Analytics import, goals, segments, and annotations. Growth is $14/month or $168/year and adds up to 3 sites, up to 3 team members, team management, shared links, embedded dashboards, and shared segments. Business is $19/month or $228/year and adds up to 10 sites, up to 10 team members, 5-year retention, custom properties, the Stats API at 600 requests per hour, a Looker Studio connector, revenue attribution, and funnels. Enterprise is custom-quoted for more than 10 sites or 10 team members and adds higher API limits, SSO, a managed proxy, raw data exports, and priority support. Annual billing on every paid tier works out to two months free. Who it is for: indie founders, small SaaS teams, bloggers, and agencies who want to know where traffic comes from and which pages convert, and who do not want to run a consent flow or explain a data processing agreement to a customer. How it compares: Google Analytics 4 is free and far more powerful for ad attribution and audience building, and remains the right choice if you buy paid media at scale. Fathom Analytics is the closest direct competitor with near-identical positioning. Matomo offers more depth and a mature self-hosted product, at the cost of a heavier install. PostHog covers analytics plus session replay and feature flags, which is more tool than most content sites need. Plausible wins on simplicity, page weight, and the absence of a cookie banner, and loses whenever you need advertising attribution or deep cohort analysis. Choose it if your analytics question is "what is working" rather than "model my funnel across six ad platforms".