Google Analytics alternatives and their free plans

Founders usually leave Google Analytics for one of two reasons. It reports far more than a small site needs, so the three numbers that matter (visitors, sources and sign-ups) take work to find. And it sets a cookie, _ga, that lasts two years, and with Google’s consent mode the gaps left by visitors who turn cookies down can be filled in by modelling.

Below are ten alternatives, with each one’s free option, its first paid plan, whether goals and funnels are on it, and what it says about cookies, in its own words. Every price was read on the vendor’s own page on 23 September 2026, and each one links there.

Deacon comes first because it’s ours, and because it does something none of the others do. It’s an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves. It answers your customers in seconds from your own docs and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. The same script counts your visitors, sources, goals, funnels and JavaScript errors, all on the free plan, which needs no card and has no end date. Unlike most of this list, that script sets a cookie, deacon_visitor_id, and keeps the same id in local storage. The Deacon section below says what that means for your cookie banner.

Ten Google Analytics alternatives side by side

Google Analytics is in the last row, so you can hold each one up against what you have now.

What to check before you switch

These are the differences that decide which tool fits, and they’re easy to miss on a pricing page.

What the meter counts

Plausible, Fathom and Pirsch price by page views, and Fathom counts every custom event against the same allowance. Pirsch counts events too, plus a tenth of its session extensions. Umami and PostHog count events, where each page view is one. Matomo counts hits. Simple Analytics prices its paid plan by page views, and its free plan has no page view limit under a fair use policy.

Deacon doesn’t count page views against any plan, because its plans are priced on the chat’s answers.

Whether goals and funnels are on your plan

Funnels are where the cheaper plans stop. Plausible has them from Business and Pirsch from Plus, and Simple Analytics leaves goals off its free plan. Umami’s free Hobby plan has both, and so do PostHog’s free allowance and Microsoft Clarity. Cloudflare Web Analytics doesn’t support custom events yet.

Deacon has goals and funnels on every plan, the free one included.

How long your data is kept

Simple Analytics’ free plan keeps 30 days and Umami’s Hobby plan six months. Cloudflare shows the last six months and aggregates data down to about 10% after 7 days. PostHog keeps events for a year on its free plan, and Plausible keeps three years from Starter.

Deacon’s dashboard reads 7, 30 or 90 days, or all time.

What it says about cookies and consent

By their own pages, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Umami, Pirsch and Cloudflare Web Analytics count without cookies, and most of them say you need no consent banner. Matomo, PostHog, Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics set cookies by default, and each has a way to wait for consent.

Counting without cookies doesn’t settle consent on its own. Matomo, which offers both, says that in Germany, JavaScript tracking “without cookies and without identifiers may reduce legal risks but still involves accessing the visitor’s device”, and there it recommends “treating JavaScript-based tracking as requiring consent, unless and until a supervisory authority provides clarity.” Whether your site needs a banner depends on where your visitors are and what your scripts store, so ask whoever writes your privacy policy.

Deacon’s script sets a cookie, deacon_visitor_id, and keeps the same id in local storage, so list it like any other script that stores something on the visitor’s device.

Whether you can host it yourself

Plausible Community Edition is free to host on your own server under the AGPLv3 licence, without funnels. Umami is open source and free to host yourself. Matomo On-Premise is free on your own server, with funnels and other extras sold as plugins.

Deacon is hosted only.

What you give up by leaving Google Analytics

Google Analytics is free, and its reports go further than most tools on this list. It marks key events, builds funnel explorations and links to a Google Ads account. Analytics 360 is its paid tier, with no price on its page.

Its tag sets _ga and a session cookie, both kept for two years by default. With the advanced setup of consent mode, a visitor who declines is sent as a ping without cookies, and Google fills the gaps with modelling. If you don’t buy Google Ads and don’t build explorations, a simpler tool covers what you’ll read each week.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves, and the script that runs its chat is also your website analytics. You add one script tag to your site and point Deacon at your help pages, files or pasted text. From then on it answers your customers in seconds, day or night, in whatever language they write in, and counts the visitors who come.

Analytics › Website shows your visitors, page views, visits, pages per visit and time on site, then your pages, sources, countries and devices, over 7, 30 or 90 days or all time. A goal is sent from your code with Deacon.track('Sign up'), from a data-deacon-goal attribute on a button or link, or from a class in a site builder that only lets you set one. A funnel puts two to five steps in order, each one of your goals, and its first step can be Visited, meaning any page. The Errors card lists the JavaScript errors your own scripts throw, one row per bug, with how many people hit each. And Worth knowing writes up to five plain sentences about what stands out, such as a new error, a traffic spike or a source that converts better than the rest.

Sources are rated against one goal, which Deacon picks for you. It’s Sign up if you have a goal by that name, else the end of your first funnel, else the first goal to arrive. A source is the site that sent the visitor or the utm_source you set, listed as it came, so google.com reads google.com and nothing is grouped into channels. A visit with no referrer reads Direct. A visitor is counted once per UTC day, so someone who comes back tomorrow counts again.

Page views are counted without a cookie, from a hash that changes every day, but the script does set a cookie, deacon_visitor_id, as it loads, and keeps the same id in local storage. The cookie asks for 90 days, and Safari cuts a cookie set by a script to about 7. Website analytics stores no IP address, while the chat keeps its visitors’ IP addresses for 30 days. Deacon doesn’t read Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control and has no consent setting of its own, so if your site asks visitors before setting cookies, treat Deacon’s script like any other that sets one. Add data-no-page-views to the script tag on a page, such as inside your signed-in app, and it sends no page views or JavaScript errors from there, while goals still arrive.

The chat is the half no other tool on this list has. When your content doesn’t cover a question, Deacon says it doesn’t know instead of guessing, and asks for the visitor’s email. Every question your content didn’t cover waits in your dashboard with an Answer this button, and what you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it gets better and needs you less the more you answer. Topics group what visitors ask, count the people behind each and label most as a feature ask, a bug report, a how-to and so on. So the dashboard that shows where visitors came from also shows what they wanted when they got there.

Deacon isn’t a full analytics suite. Its website analytics doesn’t identify companies or people, group sources into channels or define a goal by a URL. It has no heatmaps, session recordings, ecommerce revenue or export, and no import from Google Analytics, so its figures start the day you add the script.

Every feature is on every plan, the free one included, and no plan limits page views. The plans differ only in answers, knowledge, crawled pages and seats for the chat. Free gives you 50 answers a month, 1 seat and room for about 67 pages of docs, with no card, no end date and nothing deleted if you go quiet. Starter is $50 a month, or $40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 answers a month and 3 seats. Growth is $150 a month, or $120 a month billed yearly, for 4,000 answers a month and 10 seats. Nothing is billed past your plan’s answers, and no plan upgrades itself.

Plausible

Plausible keeps everything on one dashboard page, and it’s made and hosted in the EU. It says more than 21,000 customers pay for it. Its homepage promises “No cookies, no persistent identifiers, no cross-site or cross-device tracking”, under a heading that reads “No need for cookie banners or GDPR consent”.

There’s no free plan, just a 30-day trial with no card. Starter is $9 a month, or $90 a year, for up to 10,000 page views a month on one site, with goals, custom events and three years of data. Funnels and user journeys start on Business, at $19 a month for the same traffic. Plausible groups your UTM campaigns into channels such as paid search, connects to Search Console and imports your Google Analytics history. Its Community Edition is free if you run it on your own server, without funnels.

Fathom

Fathom is paid only. “We don’t offer a free plan,” its pricing page says. Plans start at $15 a month for up to 100,000 page views across 50 sites, with two months free on yearly billing. The 7-day trial needs a card, and billing starts when it ends.

Custom events, such as sign-ups and purchases, count towards the same page view allowance. Every plan has the same features, so you pay only for traffic. Fathom’s homepage says it “doesn’t use cookies, so no consent banner is required for your analytics.”

Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics has a free plan for hobby sites, with unlimited page views under a fair use policy, 5 websites and 1 user. It keeps only the last 30 days of data, requires its badge on your site and leaves out goals and events.

The paid Simple plan starts at $15 a month for up to 20,000 page views and $20 for up to 100,000, with goals, events and three years of history. Its page shows sterling to UK visitors, so these dollar figures come from the page’s own price data. Simple Analytics says “We do not use cookies and never collect information that could be used to fingerprint a user.”

Umami

Umami is open source and free to host yourself. Umami Cloud’s free Hobby plan gives you 100,000 events a month, one website and six months of data, with goals, funnels, user journeys and retention reports included. A page view counts as one event, and so does each custom event and each property you store with one.

Pro is $20 a month for a million events, up to 20 websites and two years of data, after a 14-day trial. Umami says it “does not use cookies, does not collect personal data, and does not track users across websites.”

Pirsch

Pirsch has no free plan, but its 30-day trial needs no card. Standard is $6 a month, or $60 a year, for 10,000 page views, with events and conversion goals. Funnels start on Plus, at $12 a month.

Custom events and a tenth of its session extensions count towards the page view limit. If you reach it, your dashboard stops at that day, and Pirsch keeps collecting for five more days, which gives you time to upgrade. It says it “works without cookies and never stores your visitors’ personal identifiable information.”

Matomo

Matomo is a full analytics suite, with ecommerce tracking, heatmaps, session recordings, A/B tests, a tag manager and a Google Analytics importer. Matomo On-Premise is free to run on your own server with unlimited users and hits, and funnels, Crash Analytics and other extras are paid plugins there.

Matomo Cloud includes every feature and starts at $26 a month for 50,000 hits, with two months free on yearly billing and a free trial that needs no card. Its page shows sterling to UK visitors, so the dollar figure comes from its own price data. By default its tracking code sets first-party cookies, including _pk_id for 13 months and _pk_ses for 30 minutes, and you can turn them off. Matomo is also unusually frank about consent, as the cookie section above shows.

PostHog

PostHog puts web analytics, product analytics, session replay, feature flags, error tracking and more on one bill. Its free allowance renews every month and needs no card. It covers 1 million analytics events, 5,000 session recordings and 100,000 exceptions for error tracking, and events are kept for a year on the free plan. Past that you pay per use, and a billing limit stops charges where you set it.

By default its JavaScript library keeps a first-party cookie, named after your project, for 365 days, alongside local storage. Its docs show how to keep everything in page memory until a visitor consents. It suits a technical team that wants product analytics as well as a traffic count.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Cloudflare Web Analytics is free, and its page says it “does not use any client-side state, such as cookies or localStorage, to collect usage metrics.”

It’s also the barest tool here. Its FAQ answers “Not yet” on custom events, and it doesn’t log query strings, so UTM tags aren’t recorded. You can see the last six months, and after 7 days the data is aggregated down to about 10%. It suits a site that only needs to know how much traffic it gets.

Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is free, and its homepage promises “No limits on traffic.” It’s built around session recordings and heatmaps, with funnels made from smart events or page visits, and a count of JavaScript errors.

It sets two first-party cookies, _clck and _clsk, and third-party ones on Microsoft’s domains, such as MUID. Since 31 October 2025 it has required a consent signal for visits from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and its consent mode is on by default for those visitors. It suits a founder who wants to watch how people use a page.

Which one fits you

Start from what you need to know each week and what you’re willing to put in front of your visitors.

If you want a simple dashboard without cookies and are happy to pay from day one, Plausible, Fathom and Pirsch are built for that. If you want goals and funnels for free, Umami’s Hobby plan has both. If you only need a traffic count, Cloudflare Web Analytics or Simple Analytics’ free plan will do it. If you’d rather host it yourself, Plausible Community Edition, Umami and Matomo On-Premise are free on your own server. If you want funnels, session replay and error tracking in one place, PostHog’s free allowance covers them, with a cookie by default. And if you want to watch recordings of real visits, Microsoft Clarity is free.

If you answer your own support, Deacon is the one built for you. The script you’d add for analytics also answers your customers in seconds, and shows you what they’re stuck on and what they want next. Goals, funnels, sources and JavaScript errors are all on the free plan, and it needs no card.

Questions about Google Analytics alternatives

Is there a free Google Analytics alternative?

Yes, several. Deacon’s free plan counts visitors, sources, goals, funnels and JavaScript errors with no limit on page views, no card and no end date. Umami’s Hobby plan is free for 100,000 events a month, and PostHog’s free allowance is 1 million events. Simple Analytics has a free plan with 30 days of history, and Cloudflare Web Analytics and Microsoft Clarity are free. Plausible, Fathom and Pirsch offer trials rather than free plans, though Plausible’s Community Edition is free to host yourself.

Is there an open-source Google Analytics alternative?

Yes. Plausible Community Edition is open source under the AGPLv3 licence, Umami is open source, and Matomo On-Premise is the open-source version of Matomo you host yourself. Each is free on your own server, and Plausible’s leaves out funnels. Deacon isn’t open source. It’s a hosted service with a free plan.

Which Google Analytics alternatives don’t use cookies?

By their own pages, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, Umami, Pirsch and Cloudflare Web Analytics count without cookies. Matomo, PostHog, Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics set cookies by default, and each has a way to wait for consent or run without them.

Deacon counts page views without a cookie, but its script sets a deacon_visitor_id cookie as it loads and keeps the same id in local storage, so it isn’t one of them.

Does Deacon need a cookie banner?

Deacon’s script sets a cookie, deacon_visitor_id, as soon as it loads, and keeps the same id in local storage. Deacon has no consent setting of its own and doesn’t read Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. So if your site asks visitors before setting cookies, treat Deacon’s script like any other that sets one, and list both in your cookie policy.

Can I run Deacon alongside Google Analytics?

Yes. They don’t get in each other’s way, so you can run both for a month and compare. Expect different figures, because Deacon counts a visitor once per UTC day and never groups sources into channels. There’s no import from Google Analytics, so Deacon’s figures start the day you add its script.

Can Deacon tell me which companies visit my site?

No. Deacon’s website analytics counts visitors and doesn’t identify companies or people. Analytics › Website shows totals, and no visitor there has a name or a profile.

Can I use Deacon’s analytics without the chat?

You can hide the chat button in the Appearance editor, and the counting carries on. There’s no analytics-only install, so the script still sets its cookie and its local storage id, and your own button can still open the chat with Deacon.open().