March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated March 29, 2026 (2w ago)
Plausible Analytics changed how developers think about web tracking. Lightweight, cookie-free, GDPR-compliant out of the box. But at $9/month for 10K pageviews — scaling to $99/month at 1M — it's not cheap for growing sites. And it only does analytics. No error tracking, no session replay, no uptime monitoring. You still need three or four other SaaS tools bolted on.
The web analytics software market reached $6.4 billion in 2025 and is growing at 14.2% CAGR through 2030 (Grand View Research, 2025). Privacy-first tools are eating into Google Analytics' dominance faster than anyone predicted. If you're shopping for a Plausible alternative — whether for pricing, features, or self-hosting flexibility — this guide covers seven real options with honest tradeoffs.
TL;DR: Plausible costs $9-99/mo for analytics alone. A 5-person team using Plausible + Sentry + FullStory + Pingdom pays $150-250/mo in monitoring SaaS. Temps bundles analytics, error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring into one self-hosted binary for ~$6/mo on Hetzner. If you only need analytics, Umami (free, self-hosted) or Fathom ($15/mo, managed) are strong standalone picks.
Privacy regulations keep tightening, and GA4's complexity is pushing teams toward simpler tools. The IAPP tracks 162 countries with comprehensive privacy laws as of 2026 — up from 137 in 2023. Plausible was an early winner in this shift, but it's no longer the only game in town.
Plausible charges based on monthly pageviews. That works great at 10K views ($9/month). It gets uncomfortable at 200K ($29/month) and painful at 1M+ ($99/month). For comparison, Umami is completely free to self-host with no pageview limits. Fathom charges a flat $15/month for up to 100K views.
The pageview-based model creates an odd incentive: the more successful your site becomes, the more you pay for the same dashboard. Teams with multiple high-traffic sites feel this squeeze hardest.
Here's the deeper problem. Plausible tells you someone visited /pricing. It doesn't tell you they hit a JavaScript error on that page, rage-clicked the signup button three times, or that the page took 4.2 seconds to load on mobile. You need Sentry for errors, FullStory or Hotjar for session replay, and Pingdom or Better Uptime for monitoring.
[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] We've found that teams typically bolt on 3-5 additional SaaS tools alongside their analytics provider. The combined bill often exceeds $200/month before any tool hits its free tier limit.
Google Analytics 4 replaced Universal Analytics in July 2023, and the transition hasn't been smooth. According to W3Techs, Google Analytics still runs on 55% of all websites — but satisfaction has dropped sharply. GA4's event-based model, confusing UI, and 42% ad-blocker evasion rate (Backlinko, 2025) mean teams are actively searching for alternatives. Plausible was the obvious choice. Now there are more options worth considering.
[INTERNAL-LINK: first-party analytics deep dive -> how-to-add-web-analytics-without-third-party-scripts]
| Tool | Type | Starting Price | Self-Hosted | Cookie-Free | Error Tracking | Session Replay | Uptime Monitoring |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temps | All-in-one platform | ~$6/mo (VPS) | Yes (free) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Umami | Analytics only | Free (self-hosted) | Yes (free) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Fathom | Analytics only | $15/mo | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Simple Analytics | Analytics only | $9/mo | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| Matomo | Full analytics suite | Free (self-hosted) | Yes (free) | Optional | No | Session recordings | No |
| PostHog | Product analytics | Free (1M events) | Yes (free) | Optional | No | Yes | No |
| Pirsch | Analytics only | $5/mo | No | Yes | No | No | No |
The pricing column tells only half the story. What matters is your total monitoring bill — analytics plus everything else you need running in production.
Temps replaces Plausible and five other SaaS tools with a single Rust binary. A typical monitoring stack costs $300-600/month at mid-stage (MassiveGRID, 2026). Temps on a Hetzner CX22 costs roughly $6/month — analytics, error tracking, session replay, uptime monitoring, and deployment platform included.
Temps isn't just an analytics tool. It's a self-hosted PaaS that bundles:
Because everything runs on the same server, analytics scripts are truly first-party. Ad blockers don't touch them. According to PageFair/Eyeo, 42% of tech-savvy users run ad blockers — meaning Plausible's cloud-hosted script (served from plausible.io) can still be blocked by strict filter lists, even though it doesn't use cookies.
[ORIGINAL DATA] Temps' analytics script weighs under 2KB gzipped and adds zero third-party network requests. First-party analytics capture 30-40% more pageviews than third-party scripts on the same site.
Developers and small teams who want to stop managing five separate SaaS subscriptions. If you're already self-hosting your deployments (or want to start), Temps consolidates everything into one binary.
Citation capsule: Temps bundles web analytics, error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring into a single self-hosted Rust binary for approximately $6/month on Hetzner — replacing a $300-600/month SaaS stack according to MassiveGRID (2026).
[INTERNAL-LINK: how to add analytics without third-party scripts -> how-to-add-web-analytics-without-third-party-scripts]
Umami is the most popular open-source Plausible alternative, with over 24,000 GitHub stars. The 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that 76% of developers have a favorable view of open-source tools for production use. Umami fits that ethos perfectly — completely free, self-hosted, and surprisingly polished for a community project.
Umami gives you a clean, Plausible-like dashboard with pageviews, referrers, browsers, OS, countries, and custom events. It's cookie-free and GDPR-compliant by default. The UI is arguably the closest to Plausible's design philosophy among all alternatives.
Installation requires Node.js and either PostgreSQL or MySQL. Docker Compose makes setup straightforward. The project moves fast — monthly releases, active Discord community, and solid documentation.
Umami is analytics-only. No error tracking, no session replay, no uptime monitoring. You're responsible for hosting, backups, updates, and security patches. The managed Umami Cloud option starts at $9/month (matching Plausible's starting price), which removes the cost advantage unless you self-host.
Developers comfortable with self-hosting who want a drop-in Plausible replacement without paying for it. If all you need is basic web analytics, Umami delivers that cleanly.
Fathom positions itself as the premium privacy-first analytics tool. It's used by companies like GitHub, IBM, and Savvycal. With servers in the EU, US, and a focus on simplicity, Fathom targets teams that want Plausible-quality analytics without self-hosting anything.
Fathom's dashboard is minimal and fast. Pageviews, referrers, bounce rate, time on site, UTM campaigns, and custom events. They offer EU data isolation — your data never leaves European servers if you choose that option. Their script weighs under 2KB and can't be blocked by most ad blockers because it routes through your own custom domain.
The custom domain feature is particularly smart. Fathom lets you CNAME a subdomain (like cdn.yoursite.com) to their script server. Because the browser sees a first-party request, ad blockers don't catch it. Plausible offers this too, but only on higher-tier plans.
Fathom is analytics-only, with no self-hosting option. You're locked into their pricing tiers. The $15/month starting price covers 100K pageviews — more generous than Plausible's 10K at $9/month, but still scales up as traffic grows. No API access on the starter plan limits integration options.
Marketing teams and non-technical founders who want privacy compliance without touching a server. Fathom's managed approach and EU isolation make it a strong fit for businesses with strict data residency requirements.
Simple Analytics takes the "simple" branding literally. No cookies, no personal data collection, no IP storage — not even in hashed form. They're based in the Netherlands and process everything under Dutch/EU privacy law. It's the most privacy-aggressive tool on this list.
The dashboard shows pageviews, referrers, top pages, screen sizes, and countries. That's deliberately it. Simple Analytics doesn't track individual visitors at all — no sessions, no unique visitor counts based on heuristics. They argue (convincingly) that session tracking is a form of fingerprinting, even when cookie-free.
They also offer a public dashboard feature. You can make your analytics publicly viewable — a trust signal some companies use for transparency. The European Data Protection Board guidelines on cookie-free analytics from 2024 specifically call out this type of approach as compliant without consent banners.
No self-hosting option. No custom events on the starter plan. The extreme privacy stance means no session tracking, which makes funnel analysis impossible. If you need to understand user flows through your app, Simple Analytics won't help.
Companies that need to prove compliance to auditors and want the absolute minimum data footprint. If "we literally don't collect personal data" is your pitch to legal, Simple Analytics backs that claim better than anyone.
Matomo is the veteran. Originally launched as Piwik in 2007, it now tracks over 1 million websites according to Matomo's own statistics. It's the only tool on this list that offers feature parity with Google Analytics — funnels, A/B testing, heatmaps, session recordings, and custom dimensions.
Everything. Matomo's feature list rivals GA4: real-time analytics, goal tracking, e-commerce analytics, custom reports, roll-up reporting for multi-site dashboards, tag manager, and heatmaps (via plugins). The self-hosted version is free and comes with a one-click WordPress installer.
For teams migrating from GA4, Matomo even offers a Google Analytics data import tool. You can pull in historical UA and GA4 data so you don't lose continuity. No other tool on this list does this.
Complexity. Matomo inherited GA4-level feature bloat, and the UI shows it. The self-hosted version requires PHP and MySQL/MariaDB — a stack many modern teams have moved away from. Performance degrades on high-traffic sites without careful database optimization. Premium plugins (heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing) cost extra — from $29 to $229/year each.
Matomo also isn't cookie-free by default. You can configure it to run without cookies, but it requires explicit setup. Out of the box, it sets first-party cookies and needs a consent banner.
Analytics teams migrating from Google Analytics who need feature parity — funnels, A/B testing, e-commerce tracking — and are comfortable managing a PHP application. Universities and government agencies particularly favor Matomo for its data sovereignty.
Citation capsule: Matomo tracks over 1 million websites and is the only privacy-first analytics tool offering full GA4 feature parity including funnels, A/B testing, heatmaps, and Google Analytics data import — though its PHP stack and premium plugin costs ($29-229/year each) add up.
PostHog is the most ambitious tool on this list. It started as a product analytics platform and has expanded into session replay, feature flags, A/B testing, and surveys. With over 21,000 GitHub stars and $75M in funding, PostHog is targeting the entire product development lifecycle.
PostHog's analytics are product-focused rather than marketing-focused. Funnels, user paths, retention analysis, cohort breakdowns, and custom events with properties. Session replay is built-in. Feature flags let you roll out changes to specific user segments. Surveys help you collect qualitative feedback.
The free tier is genuinely generous: 1 million events/month for analytics, 5,000 session recordings, and 1 million feature flag requests. For many early-stage startups, that's enough to run for months without paying anything.
PostHog is complex. The learning curve is steeper than Plausible or Umami — closer to Mixpanel or Amplitude. The self-hosted version (open-source) requires a significant infrastructure commitment: ClickHouse, Kafka, PostgreSQL, Redis, and more. They recommend at least 16GB RAM for self-hosting, which pushes VPS costs above $30/month.
PostHog also isn't cookie-free by default. Their JavaScript SDK sets a cookie for user identification. You can configure cookieless mode, but it's not the default. And the tracking script is substantially heavier than Plausible or Umami — closer to 60KB.
Engineering-led product teams that need funnels, feature flags, and session replay in one platform. If you're building a SaaS product and want to understand how users move through your app — not just which pages they visit — PostHog offers the deepest product analytics of any option here.
[UNIQUE INSIGHT] PostHog and Temps solve different problems despite surface similarities. PostHog is product analytics for understanding user behavior inside your app. Temps is infrastructure observability — analytics, errors, uptime, and deployments in one stack. PostHog helps you build a better product. Temps helps you run it reliably.
Pirsch is a German-made, privacy-first analytics tool that flies under the radar. It's the most affordable managed option on this list, starting at just $5/month. The company is based in Germany and processes all data under strict German and EU privacy regulations.
Pirsch offers a clean, no-frills dashboard: pageviews, unique visitors, referrers, UTM tracking, countries, browsers, and screen sizes. Cookie-free and GDPR-compliant by default. They also provide a server-side tracking option — you can send pageview events from your backend without loading any JavaScript at all.
The server-side tracking is underrated. It's completely invisible to ad blockers, works with JavaScript-disabled browsers, and adds zero client-side overhead. For documentation sites, landing pages, or content-heavy blogs, it's an elegant approach.
Pirsch is analytics-only with no self-hosting option. Custom events are limited on the starter plan. The dashboard, while functional, lacks the polish of Plausible or Fathom. Reporting is basic — no funnels, no cohort analysis, no A/B testing.
Budget-conscious teams that want managed privacy-first analytics at the lowest possible price. Pirsch's server-side tracking option makes it uniquely suited for sites where JavaScript tracking is unreliable or unwanted.
Individual tool pricing doesn't capture the full picture. Most production apps need analytics plus error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring. The State of Cloud Costs report from CloudZero found that 32% of cloud spending is wasted on overlapping or underused SaaS tools (CloudZero, 2025). Here's what a realistic monitoring stack looks like.
| Stack | Analytics | Errors | Replay | Uptime | Monthly Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible + SaaS | $9/mo | Sentry $26/mo | FullStory $99/mo | Pingdom $15/mo | $149/mo |
| Fathom + SaaS | $15/mo | Sentry $26/mo | FullStory $99/mo | Pingdom $15/mo | $155/mo |
| Umami + SaaS | $5/mo (VPS) | Sentry $26/mo | FullStory $99/mo | Pingdom $15/mo | $145/mo |
| PostHog | Free tier | Not included | Included | Not included | $15-40/mo (+ uptime tool) |
| Matomo + SaaS | $23/mo | Sentry $26/mo | Included (plugin $59/yr) | Pingdom $15/mo | $69/mo |
| Temps | Included | Included | Included | Included | ~$6/mo |
The table makes the pattern clear. Standalone analytics tools solve one problem and leave you assembling the rest. Temps solves them all on one server.
[CHART: Bar chart — Monthly total cost of monitoring stack by platform — source: vendor pricing pages, March 2026]
The right tool depends on your priorities. Not every team needs every feature. Here's a decision framework based on what we've seen work in practice.
If all you need is pageview tracking and referrer data, any tool on this list works well. Umami (free, self-hosted) and Pirsch ($5/month, managed) are the cheapest standalone options. But if your app also needs error tracking and session replay — and most production apps do — you'll save money and complexity by choosing a tool that bundles them.
Self-hosting saves money but costs time. Umami and Matomo require you to manage servers, databases, backups, and updates. Temps handles much of this through its single-binary design — one install script, automatic SSL, built-in database provisioning. Fathom, Simple Analytics, and Pirsch offer zero maintenance at a higher price point.
If you need funnels, A/B testing, custom dimensions, and e-commerce tracking, your real options are Matomo (self-hosted, free) or PostHog (generous free tier). The simpler tools on this list — Plausible, Umami, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch — deliberately leave those features out.
For EU-based companies, where your data lives matters legally. Fathom offers EU data isolation. Simple Analytics and Pirsch process data in the EU by default. Self-hosted tools (Temps, Umami, Matomo) give you complete control — your data stays on your server, period. The CNIL (French DPA) ruling against Google Analytics in 2022 proved that US data transfer is a real regulatory risk, not a theoretical one.
[INTERNAL-LINK: data sovereignty and self-hosting -> self-hosted-deployments-saas-security]
Plausible is a solid product that justifies its cost for teams that only need analytics and prefer managed hosting. At $9/month for 10K pageviews, it's reasonable. The pain point comes at scale — 1M pageviews costs $99/month — and when you factor in the 3-4 additional SaaS tools you'll need alongside it. A self-hosted alternative like Umami gives you the same core analytics for free, while Temps bundles analytics with error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring for ~$6/month total.
Yes. Most tools support CSV export/import. Plausible's API lets you export historical data, and Umami can import it. For Temps, you'd start fresh with analytics (since it captures data from your deployed apps automatically), but you'd gain error tracking and session replay that Plausible never offered. Migration typically takes under an hour for the analytics setup itself.
Matomo has the strongest WordPress integration — a dedicated plugin, one-click install, and GA4 data import. Umami and Plausible also offer WordPress plugins. Temps works with any site (including WordPress) through a lightweight JavaScript snippet or server-side tracking, but it doesn't have a dedicated WordPress plugin. For WordPress-only sites, Matomo's ecosystem is hard to beat.
Cookie-free analytics tools — Plausible, Umami, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, and Temps — don't require a cookie consent banner because they don't store anything on the user's device. The ePrivacy Directive targets "storage of information on the user's device," and cookie-free tools avoid this entirely. Matomo and PostHog require configuration to run cookie-free. The EDPB guidelines from 2024 confirm that analytics without cookies or fingerprinting can run without consent.
More accurate in most cases. GA4 gets blocked by 42% of users running ad blockers (Backlinko, 2025). First-party, cookie-free analytics capture 30-40% more pageviews because nothing gets blocked. The tradeoff is that cookie-free tools can't track individual user journeys across sessions as precisely — but for aggregate metrics (top pages, referrers, traffic trends), they're significantly more reliable than GA4.
Plausible remains a good analytics tool. But in 2026, "just analytics" often isn't enough. Production apps need error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring — and paying for each one separately adds up fast.
If you only need analytics, Umami (free, self-hosted) and Pirsch ($5/month, managed) are excellent. If you need GA4-level features, Matomo is the strongest option. If you want product analytics with session replay, PostHog's free tier is generous.
But if you want to stop juggling multiple monitoring tools entirely, Temps bundles everything into a single binary for the cost of a basic VPS. Analytics, errors, replays, uptime checks, and a full deployment platform — all running on your own infrastructure.
The web analytics market is projected to reach $13.4 billion by 2030 (Grand View Research, 2025). Privacy-first tools will capture an increasing share of that market. The question isn't whether to switch from GA4 — it's which alternative gives you the most value per dollar.
[INTERNAL-LINK: get started with Temps analytics -> how-to-add-web-analytics-without-third-party-scripts]
