Google Analytics has worn everyone out: cookie banners, GDPR fines, slow scripts, and numbers that make no sense. Plausible is the complete opposite. No cookies, no personal data, a 1.5 KB script. Open source with self-hosting to boot.
Website: plausible.io
What It Measures
Page views, traffic sources, geography (country level), devices, entry and exit pages, goals (e.g., signups or button clicks). All on a single dashboard that loads in a second.
Plausible deliberately does not collect: IP addresses, fingerprints, user-agent strings. Sessions are determined by a hash (IP + user-agent + domain) that rotates every 24 hours. Identifying a specific user is impossible — this is a deliberate architectural decision.
For SaaS products, there are shared links: you can show stats to a client without granting account access.
Self-Hosting
Plausible is open source (AGPL). You can spin up an instance on a VPS in 15 minutes. Official Docker image, PostgreSQL + ClickHouse under the hood. The self-hosted version is free, but without official support and auto-updates.
The paid cloud plan is €9/mo for 10,000 page views, €19/mo for 100,000. That’s noticeably more expensive than Google Analytics (free), but you’re paying for privacy and no vendor lock-in.
Script and Speed
The Plausible script weighs 1.5 KB — 30 times lighter than Google Analytics. Zero impact on PageSpeed. You can proxy it through your own domain so ad blockers don’t cut into your stats. The proxy solution is interesting: the script loads from your domain, requests to Plausible go through your server — ad blockers are powerless.
Who Needs It
Developers who want simple analytics without invading user privacy. European projects where GDPR compliance is non-negotiable. Startups that need numbers for investors without legal risk headaches.
Plausible won’t replace GA for large e-commerce with funnels, segmentation, and retargeting. But for everything else — more than enough.
Downsides
Pricing at scale: 1 million page views per month — €79/mo. For that money, you can rent a powerful VPS for a self-hosted instance and serve 10+ million views.
Report customization is limited. You can’t build a complex funnel with event filtering. Fewer plugins and integrations than GA (which makes sense).
Verdict
Plausible does one thing — simple, honest analytics without tracking — and does it well. If you don’t need retargeting, A/B tests, and other marketing bells and whistles, close Google Analytics and move over. Lighter, faster, more private.