Tools that show how many people visit your website, where they come from and which pages they view. First decide what you want to measure and where the data should be kept.
Good to know: Free-use terms vary by tool and plan. When a card lists no tool-specific limit, check quotas, watermarks and export terms on the official page.
Google Analytics measures how people interact with your websites and apps and turns that into reports you can analyze and share. Google's overview page describes it as free of charge and lists Analytics 360 as a separate product, which this entry does not cover. Google's documentation states that Google tags use cookies to recognize unique users; in Google Analytics properties, user-level data can be kept for 2 or 14 months, and Google says this retention setting affects explorations and funnel reports, not standard reports.
Simple Analytics is a website analytics service with a one-page dashboard for pageviews, referrers, campaign parameters and events, plus an API and exports, and it can run alongside Google Analytics 4. The vendor says it uses no cookies, no localStorage or similar browser storage, no stored IP addresses and no visitor IDs, and that data is hosted in the Netherlands. On 13 October 2026 the pricing page listed a free plan for hobby sites with 1 user, 5 websites, one month of history and a required badge, paid self-serve plans sized by monthly pageviews, a 14-day trial without a credit card, and an enterprise route with a free 30-day proof of concept.
Umami is an open-source analytics tool that counts pageviews and visitors on your website and breaks them down by referrer, country, device and campaign, with custom events and funnels for tracking specific actions. The vendor states that it works without cookies and without automatically collecting personal data, and that data you choose to send, such as distinct IDs or event properties, is your responsibility. As of 13 October 2026 the pricing page lists a free Hobby plan on Umami Cloud limited to 1 website, up to 100K events each month and 6 months of data retention, paid plans with a 14-day trial, and free self-hosting.
Fathom Analytics is a hosted web analytics service that shows where visitors come from, which pages they read and what converts, using a script you add to your site's head. The vendor states that it does not use cookies; its data page describes building a visitor signature from the IP address, user-agent information, the site and a daily salt, and storing that signature with each pageview. There is no free plan: every plan starts with a 7-day free trial that needs a card, and plans are sized by monthly pageviews, which custom events also count toward.
Matomo is an open-source analytics platform for websites that reports on pages, traffic sources, conversions and events, with funnels, segments, heatmaps and session recordings among the features its site lists. You can use Matomo Cloud, where Matomo hosts the data (its pricing FAQ says in Frankfurt, Germany) and plans scale with monthly traffic, or install the software yourself; on 13 October 2026 the home page offered a 21-day Cloud trial without a credit card, and the pricing page described the self-hosted Community edition as free forever. Matomo's cookie page says the default tracking code sets first-party cookies on your domain, that these default cookies can be turned off, and that a cookieless mode exists.
Plausible Analytics is a hosted web analytics service that puts visitors, traffic sources, pages and goals on a one-page dashboard; its home page also says the code is open source and that you can run it yourself. The vendor states that it uses no cookies and no persistent visitor identifiers, and its data policy lists page URL, referrer, browser, operating system, device type, approximate location and engagement time among the data it collects. There is a 30-day free trial that needs no credit card; the plans on the page are paid and sized by monthly pageviews.
Why it fits
Website Analytics
What should you compare?
These tools measure visitors to your own site; estimating the traffic of other sites or tracking how your pages appear in Google Search are separate jobs. Try the tracking code on one site first: check that your own visit shows up in the dashboard and that the source and page reports fill in. If you want to track a goal such as a form submission or a purchase, set it up from the start and trigger it once yourself to see that it is counted.
Free plans, trial periods and the billing unit differ between tools: some count pageviews, others count events; some run only as a cloud service, others can also be installed on your own server. Read on the official pricing page what is counted, how long data is kept and whether a card is needed for the trial. Running a tool on your own server means you take on the server, updates and backups.
Do I need visitors’ consent for cookies? That depends on whether the tool uses cookies or similar identifiers, how it is set up and the rules in the countries your visitors are in. Read each tool’s official privacy and data processing pages to see what data it collects and in which region the data is stored, and ask a data protection specialist if you are unsure. This page is not legal advice.
Why do the numbers differ when I switch tools? Tools define visitors, sessions and pageviews differently, and ad blockers can stop some tracking code. Run the old and the new tool side by side for a few weeks and compare trends. Whether past data can move to the new tool depends on the tool; check the import and export options in the official documentation.
Compare documented features
This comparison is based on published official documentation. It is not a hands-on test or a quality ranking. Unknown features are not treated as verified.