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Simple Analytics vs Plausible: The Side-by-Side Breakdown

These two are the closest comparison on this list, both are privacy-first, cookieless, GDPR-friendly web analytics tools that skip the cookie banner and run on EU infrastructure. The real differences are narrow but they matter. Plausible is genuinely open-source with a free self-hostable path, while Simple Analytics adds an AI query assistant, a real free-forever tier, and a deeper enterprise customer roster. Your pick depends on whether you value self-hosting or a no-cost starting point.

Simple Analytics

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Simple Analytics is a privacy-first, cookieless web analytics platform out of Amsterdam that measures traffic without cookies, consent banners, or sending data to ad companies. It focuses on the core metrics teams actually open a dashboard to see, with an AI assistant layered on top.

Pricing: There's a genuine free-forever plan with unlimited pageviews under fair use, five sites, one user, and 30 days of history, plus a 14-day no-card trial. The self-serve plan is $20 a month with a usage slider up to 2.5 million pageviews and unlimited websites. Enterprise is custom-quoted and adds raw data and team reporting.

Key Features

  • Cookieless tracking with no consent banner
  • EU-hosted data storage for GDPR compliance
  • AI assistant for plain-language data queries
  • Pageviews, referrers, countries, and device breakdowns
  • White-label reporting for agencies

Pros

  • + Genuine free-forever tier plus a card-free trial
  • + AI assistant lets you query data in plain English
  • + Strong enterprise roster including Bloomberg and the UK Government
  • + Clean, fast dashboard with five-minute setup

Cons

  • - Not open-source, so there's no self-hosting option
  • - Lacks deep funnel, cohort, and event analysis
  • - Free tier caps history at 30 days and five sites
  • - Cookieless modeling means some figures are estimated

Plausible

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Plausible is a privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics tool built as a lightweight open-source alternative to Google Analytics. It runs on EU-owned, EU-hosted infrastructure, sets no cookies, collects no personal data, and ships a tiny script that needs no consent banner.

Pricing: There's no free hosted plan, just a 30-day no-card trial. Cloud pricing is usage-based by pageviews, starting around $9 a month for 10,000 pageviews, with Growth near $14 and Business near $19 adding API access, funnels, and revenue tracking. Annual billing gives two months free, and self-hosting the open-source build is free aside from server costs.

Key Features

  • Cookieless, no consent banner needed
  • GDPR-compliant, EU-hosted infrastructure
  • Open-source and self-hostable for free
  • Tiny script, roughly 54 times lighter than GA
  • Goals, custom events, and funnel tracking

Pros

  • + Genuinely open-source with a free self-hosted path
  • + Strong privacy story with no cookies, IPs, or cross-site tracking
  • + Dramatically simpler and faster than Google Analytics
  • + Script weight barely affects page load

Cons

  • - No free hosted plan, you pay from the first pageview
  • - Funnels, user journeys, and the API are gated to the Business tier
  • - Shallow versus GA4 or Mixpanel, no heatmaps or session replays
  • - Pricing climbs with traffic on the hosted plans

The Verdict

Pick Plausible if you want to self-host for free or value a fully open-source codebase, that's its clearest edge. Pick Simple Analytics if you want a no-cost free-forever tier, an AI assistant for querying your data, or white-label dashboards for clients. Either way you get a banner-free, EU-hosted analytics tool that recovers the traffic GA4 loses to declined cookies.

Choose Simple Analytics if:

Teams who want a free-forever tier, an AI assistant to query their data, or white-label client dashboards.

Choose Plausible if:

Teams who want to self-host for free or who value a fully open-source codebase.

Frequently Asked Questions