Web analytics tools compared
11 analytics tools across privacy-friendly website analytics, Google Analytics 4, product analytics, and heatmap or session tools. Each note says what the product is for, whether a free tier exists, the starting public price, whether you can self-host, and what the vendor says about cookies or GDPR. Checked Oct 2026. A cell that says "not stated" was left blank on purpose. There is no star rating.
Comparison
Prices are the public figures on each vendor site, checked Oct 2026. Traffic tiers, annual billing, and tax change the checkout. Open the linked page before you pay.
| Tool | Type | Free tier | Starting price | Self-host | Cookies / GDPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible | Privacy-friendly web analytics | 30-day cloud trial, no card. A free cloud plan is not stated | Starter $9/month for up to 10k monthly pageviews | Yes. Community Edition is free and AGPL-licensed | No cookies, no personal data, no consent banner. GDPR, CCPA, and PECR |
| Fathom | Privacy-friendly web analytics | No free plan. 7-day trial, card required | $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews | not stated | No tracking cookies. No cookie banner required. GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and PECR |
| Umami | Privacy-friendly web analytics | Yes. Hobby is $0/month. Paid plans have a 14-day trial | Hobby $0/month. Pro $20/month. Business $200/month | Yes. Open source, and the page says self-hosting is free | No cookies and no personal data. GDPR and CCPA. No cookie banner required |
| Simple Analytics | Privacy-friendly web analytics | Yes. Free forever for hobby sites, plus a 14-day trial | $20/month shown at 100k pageviews on the slider | not stated | No cookies, no personal data, no consent banner. GDPR, ePrivacy, UK GDPR, and PECR |
| Matomo | Privacy-friendly web analytics | On-Premise Community is free. Cloud has a free trial, no card. A free cloud plan is not stated | Cloud USD 26/month at 50,000 hits. On-Premise Team 275 €/month | Yes. On-Premise, and Community is free to download | Can be configured for GDPR and other laws. Supports consent-free tracking |
| Google Analytics 4 | Google Analytics 4 | Yes. The standard product is free of charge | $0 for standard Analytics. Analytics 360 price: not stated | not stated | Uses a first-party _ga cookie. Google says customers must offer consent |
| PostHog | Product analytics | Yes. A monthly free tier, not a trial. No credit card | $0 to start. A per-event paid rate is not stated on the page text | Yes. An MIT-licensed open source product | GDPR guide requires a reason and unambiguous consent for personal data |
| Mixpanel | Product analytics | Yes. Free forever, no credit card | Free is $0. Growth is labeled “Starts at $0” | not stated | The privacy policy says Mixpanel collects use of its Services via cookies |
| Amplitude | Product analytics | Yes. Free plan, no credit card and no time limit | Free is $0. Plus starts at $0. Growth and Enterprise are custom | not stated | Built to enable GDPR and CCPA compliance. Cookie behavior: not stated |
| Microsoft Clarity | Heatmaps and session tools | Yes. Free forever | $0. A paid plan is not stated | not stated | Uses cookies. GDPR-compliant as a data controller. Consent required for cookies |
| Hotjar | Heatmaps and session tools | Yes. Free plan, plus a 15-day Growth trial with no card | Free is $0. Growth is listed from $39/month | not stated | not stated |
Privacy-friendly web analytics
Plausible
Plausible’s homepage calls it a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative: no cookies, and no cookie banner required. The privacy page says it does not use cookies or other persistent identifiers, and that this makes it compliant with cookie laws and privacy regulations including GDPR, CCPA, and PECR. The cloud is hosted in the EU. The pricing block on the homepage offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card. It does not list a free cloud plan. Monthly prices at the “up to 10k monthly pageviews” step are Starter $9, Growth $14, and Business $19. The same table steps up with traffic, and 10M+ is Custom. Yearly billing is labeled “2 months free.” The self-hosted page says Plausible Community Edition is the free, self-hosted, AGPL-licensed release that you run on your own server.
Fathom
Fathom’s pricing page says plans start from $15/month. The lowest printed plan is $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews, with 50 sites included. Further printed steps include $25/month for up to 200,000 pageviews and $45/month for up to 500,000. Every plan includes a 7-day free trial. The card is required, and it is not charged until the trial ends. The FAQ answers “Do you offer a free plan?” with “Nope.” Extra sites are sold in packs of 50 for $10/month. The page says “No cookie banners required.” The homepage calls the product cookieless analytics and says it is GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and PECR compliant. The compliance page says Fathom’s visitor analytics uses no tracking cookies. A self-host option is not stated on these pages.
Umami
Umami’s pricing page lists Hobby at $0/month for up to 100K events per month, 1 website, 6 months of data retention, and community support. Pro is $20/month, with 1 million events included, then $0.00003 per additional event, up to 20 websites, and a 14-day free trial. Business is $200/month, with 10 million events included, then $0.00002 per additional event, plus heatmaps and session replays. Enterprise is custom. The FAQ says Umami is GDPR and CCPA compliant, does not use cookies, does not collect personal data, and does not need a cookie consent banner. It also says Umami is open source and can be self-hosted for free, while Umami Cloud is the managed service.
Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics’ pricing page shows $20/month next to a pageview slider labeled from 100k to 2.5M. The FAQ says the monthly fee matches usage and that you drag the slider to see the price, so $20 is the figure printed at that 100k setting, not a flat price for every volume. An extra user is +$20/month. Yearly billing is labeled “2 months free.” The free plan is free forever: 1 user, 5 websites, 1 month of history, a badge, and unlimited pageviews under a fair use policy. A 14-day trial does not need a credit card, and an assisted 30-day proof of concept is also described. Enterprise pricing is custom. The page says there are no cookies, no consent banners, and no personal data, and that the product is GDPR compliant, including the ePrivacy Directive, UK GDPR, and PECR. Data is described as staying in the Netherlands. A self-host option is not stated.
Matomo
Matomo’s pricing page offers Cloud and On-Premise. The Cloud table’s first traffic option is 50,000 hits per month. The page loads prices from its own pricing feed. Checked Oct 2026, that feed returned currency USD and a Cloud price of 26 for 50,000 hits. The page labels the monthly price as excluding tax and says annual billing gives 2 months free. Above 10 million hits, the page says to contact them. Cloud has a free trial and does not ask for a credit card. A free cloud plan is not stated. On-Premise Community is “Free forever,” with unlimited users and hits. On-Premise Team is shown as 275 € per month, and the comparison row says from €230/month, for up to 4 users and up to 5 million hits per month. The on-premise page says On-Premise is free to download and that you can configure Matomo not to process personal data. The privacy page says Matomo can be configured for GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD, and PECR, that the CNIL has approved it as exempt from tracking consent requirements, and that it supports consent-free tracking.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4
Google’s Analytics overview says Google Analytics gives you the tools, free of charge, to understand the customer journey across devices and platforms. Analytics 360 is the enterprise product on the same marketing platform. Its overview page does not print a price. A self-host option is not stated. Google’s Analytics support page says Analytics stores a client ID in a first-party cookie named _ga to distinguish users and sessions, and that the SDK uses technologies similar to cookies on mobile. A separate support page says use of cookies and app instance IDs falls under privacy laws, and that Google customers need to inform users and give them a chance to grant or deny consent.
Product analytics
PostHog
PostHog’s pricing page says 97% of companies use it for free, and that the free allowance renews every month. The printed monthly free tier includes 1 million analytics events, 5,000 session recordings, 1 million feature-flag requests, 100,000 error-tracking exceptions, and 1,500 survey responses. The free plan needs no credit card, includes 1 project, and stops at the free limits so you are not billed by surprise. Pay-as-you-go keeps the same free tier and charges for usage above it. The page does not print a single per-event dollar rate in its text. It does print an onboarding call at $80 and custom log retention at $0.05/GB per month. It also says there is an MIT-licensed open source product. The GDPR guide says you need a reason to collect personal data and unambiguous consent, and that if you self-host outside the EU while collecting EU users’ personal data you should anonymize it.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel’s pricing page says the Free plan is free forever and needs no credit card. It includes up to 1 million events per month, 10,000 session replays per month, and unlimited seats. Growth is labeled “Starts at $0,” includes the first 1 million events free, and goes up to 20 million events per month. The on-page estimator, at the setting it labels 18 million events per year, prints $100/month on yearly billing, $140 with the monthly plan, and $1,200 total annual cost. Enterprise is a quote, up to 1 trillion events per month. A self-host option is not stated. Mixpanel’s privacy policy says it collects information about use of its Services via cookies. The pricing page does not state a cookie-banner rule.
Amplitude
Amplitude’s pricing page says the Free plan is completely free, with no credit card and no time limit. It includes 2 million events per month and 10,000 monthly session replays. Plus starts at $0, includes the first 2 million events per month free, and requires a credit card. Growth and Enterprise are custom event-based pricing and say to contact sales. A startup scholarship offers one free year of Growth for companies with fewer than 20 employees and less than $10 million in funding. A self-host option is not stated. Amplitude’s security and privacy page says the platform is built to enable compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations. Whether the product sets cookies is not stated on the pricing page.
Heatmaps and session tools
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity’s homepage calls it free heatmaps and session recordings, says it is free forever, and says it is GDPR and CCPA ready. The FAQ says Clarity is a free service forever, with no traffic limits and no requirement to upgrade to a paid version. A paid price is not stated. A self-host option is not stated. The same FAQ says Clarity is GDPR-compliant as a data controller, that it uses first-party cookies, and that explicit user consent is required before placing cookies where local regulations say so. Without that consent, Clarity cookies cannot be used, and features such as funnel tracking and session recordings can be affected.
Hotjar
hotjar.com/pricing redirects to Contentsquare’s pricing page. That page’s Experience Analytics comparison lists a Free plan at $0 forever, with up to 200,000 monthly sessions, 1 month of data access, 1 project, and replays, heatmaps, and funnels. Growth is listed from $39/month. The Growth card also prints $49 next to $39/month, so this page does not guess which number is the monthly rate. Pro and Enterprise say Custom. The FAQ says every new account starts with a free trial of the Growth plans, with no auto-charge and no payment details, and that after 15 days you can stay on a free plan. A self-host option is not stated. Cookie and GDPR terms are not stated on that pricing page.
How to choose
Name the question first. Pageviews and referrers are a website analytics job. Named events, funnels, and retention are a product analytics job. Clicks, scrolls, and recordings are a heatmap job. Plausible, Fathom, Umami, Simple Analytics, and Matomo answer the first. PostHog, Mixpanel, and Amplitude answer the second, and PostHog also includes recordings. Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar answer the third. Google Analytics 4 covers websites and apps and is free of charge. It does not replace a recording tool.
Start where a free tier is printed. Umami Hobby, Simple Analytics’ hobby plan, Matomo On-Premise Community, Google Analytics 4, PostHog, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Microsoft Clarity, and Hotjar’s free plan can be used at $0 inside the limits each vendor prints. Plausible’s public offer is a 30-day trial. Fathom’s public offer is a 7-day trial, and its FAQ says there is no free plan.
Read the unit before the annual commit. Plausible and Fathom price by monthly pageviews. Umami prices by events, with a per-event rate after the included amount. Simple Analytics says the fee follows usage. Matomo Cloud prices by hits, and the price feed checked Oct 2026 lists USD 26 at 50,000 hits. Mixpanel and Amplitude price by events, and both label a paid plan as starting at $0. PostHog’s page does not print one per-event number. Analytics 360 does not print a price.
Treat cookies as a legal question, not a slogan. Plausible, Fathom, Umami, and Simple Analytics say they do not set cookies. Matomo says consent-free tracking is possible when you configure it that way. Google Analytics 4 and Microsoft Clarity say they use cookies, and both say consent matters. A vendor’s privacy claim is not a ruling for your site.
The vendors in the table above are not listed as their own pages on Uno. The directory does list other analytics products, including Vectr4, Zenovay, and Draxlr. Browse Data & Analytics and Business analytics for those.
FAQ
Uno listings
These directory pages already exist. They are separate from the vendor write-ups above. None of the compared vendors has its own Uno listing.
List an analytics tool
Uno is a directory page for the product. The submit page explains the free and paid ways to add one.
Submit a toolDetails checked Oct 2026: Plausible pricing; Plausible privacy; Plausible self-hosted; Fathom pricing; Fathom; Fathom compliance; Umami pricing; Simple Analytics pricing; Matomo pricing; Matomo On-Premise; Matomo privacy; Google Analytics; Analytics 360; Google Analytics cookies; Google Analytics privacy; PostHog pricing; PostHog GDPR; Mixpanel pricing; Mixpanel privacy policy; Amplitude pricing; Amplitude security and privacy; Microsoft Clarity; Microsoft Clarity FAQ; Hotjar pricing; Contentsquare pricing.