Plausible is an open source, privacy-first web analytics tool you can self-host — a lightweight, cookie-free Google Analytics alternative that puts the traffic numbers that matter on a single dashboard, with no cookie banners.

What is Plausible Analytics?

Plausible Analytics is an open source web analytics tool that tracks your website traffic without cookies or personal data. It shows visitors, pageviews, sources, and conversions on a single real-time dashboard — a privacy-first, lightweight alternative to Google Analytics you can self-host or run on Plausible’s managed cloud.

What is Plausible best for?

Site owners, bloggers, and small teams who want clear traffic numbers without the complexity of Google Analytics or the legal overhead of cookie consent. Because Plausible collects no personal data, you skip cookie banners entirely. It’s built for people who want the handful of metrics that matter — not a hundred reports they’ll never open.

What can Plausible do?

Track visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, and traffic sources on one real-time dashboard
Run cookie-free — GDPR, CCPA, and PECR compliant with no consent banner required
Load a tiny tracking script (under 1 KB, far smaller than Google Analytics’)
Set up goals and conversions (funnels and ecommerce revenue are paid Plausible Cloud features)
Pull SEO and keyword data through Google Search Console integration
Send automated email and Slack reports, and export via a Stats API or CSV
Keep data in the EU on European-owned servers (Plausible Cloud)

Is Plausible free?

Partly — Plausible Community Edition is free and open source to self-host under the AGPLv3 license, so you only pay for your own server. Plausible Cloud is a paid, managed subscription that starts at $9/mo and scales with your monthly pageviews, with a 30-day free trial and no credit card required.

Where does Plausible fall short?

It’s intentionally minimal: no heatmaps, session recordings, or A/B testing like Matomo, and lighter segmentation than Google Analytics.
Some features — funnels, ecommerce revenue, single sign-on — are cloud-only premium and aren’t in the free Community Edition.
Self-hosting needs both PostgreSQL and ClickHouse — two databases where most tools need one — and the Community Edition trails the cloud: new features land about twice a year, with basic bot filtering and no premium support.

What does Plausible replace?

Plausible is a privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. It answers the same “how much traffic am I getting and where from” questions, but without cookies, personal-data collection, or consent banners — and you can host it yourself instead of sending visitor data to Google. It also competes with Matomo and Fathom in the privacy-analytics space.

FAQ

Is Plausible open source? Yes. Plausible Community Edition is licensed under the AGPLv3 (the JavaScript tracker is MIT), and the full source is on GitHub. That makes it genuinely OSI-approved open source, not just source-available.

Can I self-host Plausible for free? Yes. The Community Edition is free to self-host with Docker Compose — you only pay for the server. You’ll need to run PostgreSQL and ClickHouse and handle your own updates, backups, and security.

Is Plausible a good Google Analytics alternative? For most site owners, yes — it’s simpler, faster, and avoids cookie consent. If you rely on Google Analytics’ deep segmentation, audience tools, or ad-platform integrations, Plausible is deliberately more limited.

What do I need to run Plausible? A server with Docker and at least 2 GB of RAM. The self-hosted stack uses PostgreSQL for general data and ClickHouse for analytics, deployed with Docker Compose.