Umami

Umami is a lightweight, privacy-focused web analytics tool that gives you the traffic numbers you need without the bloat or surveillance of Google Analytics.

What is Umami?

Umami is an open source web analytics tool that tracks page views, visitors, sessions, and custom events for your websites — a privacy-first Google Analytics alternative you can self-host for free. It collects no cookies and no personally identifiable information, so most setups need no consent banner.

What is Umami best for?

Umami is best for developers, indie hackers, and small teams who want simple, readable traffic stats without the complexity or compliance overhead of Google Analytics. It suits content sites, SaaS apps, and marketing pages where the questions are “how many visitors, from where, on which pages” rather than deep behavioral analysis. The single-screen dashboard and ~2KB tracking script make it a fast, low-maintenance default.

What can Umami do?

• Track page views, unique visitors, sessions, bounce rate, and average visit time in a real-time dashboard.
• Break traffic down by referrer, UTM campaign, country, device, browser, and operating system.
• Record custom events and goals to measure clicks, signups, and conversions.
• Build funnel, retention, user-journey, and audience-segment reports.
• Manage multiple websites and share dashboards across team members and accounts.
• Serve a tiny, cookie-free tracking script that you can rename to dodge ad blockers.
• Run fully self-hosted via Docker, or use the managed Umami Cloud.

Where does Umami fall short?

Umami is deliberately minimal, so it skips features power users may expect. There are no heatmaps, no session recordings, and no automatic event capture — every custom event has to be instrumented by hand. Reporting is comparatively basic: custom report builders are limited and data export is CSV-only. For very high-traffic sites, the self-hosted version handles roughly 100k events/month comfortably but needs database and server tuning beyond that.

Is Umami free?

Yes — the self-hosted version is completely free and open source under the MIT license; you only pay for your own server. The hosted Umami Cloud has a free Hobby tier (around 100k events/month across 3 sites) and a Pro plan at about $20/month for 1M events/month, 20 sites, and longer data retention. Pricing and limits change, so check the current plans before relying on them.

What does Umami replace?

Umami is a direct open source Google Analytics alternative. It covers the everyday reporting most teams actually use GA for — traffic, sources, top pages, and conversions — while avoiding cookies and personal-data collection. It overlaps with other privacy analytics tools like Plausible and the heavier, more full-featured Matomo; Umami is the lightest-weight of the three.

FAQ

Is Umami open source? Yes. Umami is released under the permissive MIT license, with full source on GitHub. You can self-host, modify, and run it without paying anything.

Can I self-host Umami for free? Yes. Self-hosting is free aside from your own hosting costs. It is a Next.js/TypeScript app that needs Node.js 18.18+ and a PostgreSQL or MySQL database, and ships with official Docker images and a Docker Compose file.

Is Umami a good Google Analytics alternative? For most sites, yes — it delivers clean, real-time traffic stats without cookies or consent banners, which sidesteps much of GA’s GDPR compliance burden. It is not a match for GA’s deep segmentation, custom reports, or behavioral analytics.

What do I need to run Umami? A server with Node.js 18.18+, a PostgreSQL (12.14+) or MySQL database, and a small JavaScript snippet added to your site. Docker makes the install a one-command setup.