Best Google Analytics Alternatives in 2026: Privacy-Friendly and Self-Hosted Options

For most websites, the best Google Analytics alternatives are Plausible for a simple hosted dashboard, Matomo for the closest feature match you can run on your own server, and Umami for lightweight open-source analytics under the MIT licence. Teams that need to follow people inside a product, not just count page views, should look at PostHog.

This guide treats two jobs separately, because they get mixed up: web analytics (traffic, referrers, campaigns) and product analytics (events, funnels, retention, session replay). Enlisted compares twelve options below, open source and hosted, with live licence, self-hosting, pricing and GitHub data in the table.

Why people look for Google Analytics alternatives

Google Analytics is Google's web and app analytics service. Enlisted lists it as closed source and hosted, with a free version for businesses of all sizes and enterprise options through Google Marketing Platform. The reasons for comparing it with other tools are usually about control:

• Data lives with Google. There is no self-hosted version, so every visit is processed on Google's infrastructure. Several alternatives below can run on your own server instead.
• It is built around advertising. Enlisted's catalogue lists audience lists for tailored marketing, links with Google advertising products and Tag Manager integration among its features. A site that does not run Google Ads may never touch them.
• Cookies and consent. Many alternatives are cookieless by design, and their vendors say that removes the need for a consent banner. That depends on where your visitors are and how you configure the tool, so treat it as a question for a privacy professional, not a guarantee.
• A lot of product for a small job. A blog or brochure site often needs page views, referrers and a few goals. Tools such as Plausible and Fathom put those on a single page.
• Raw data ownership. Matomo and Umami store data in a database you control, which helps if you need to query it yourself or keep it inside a regulated environment.

How we picked

Each tool does the core job of measuring how people use a website or app. For open-source tools, Enlisted checks the licence, whether the repository is active on GitHub and whether it can be self-hosted. For hosted products it records the published pricing model and whether there is a free plan or trial. Nothing here comes from first-hand product testing; the descriptions follow Enlisted's catalogue data and each vendor's own documentation. See how Enlisted ranks tools.

Web analytics or product analytics: which job do you need?

Web analytics answers questions about a site: where visitors came from, which pages they read and which campaigns led to conversions. Plausible, Matomo, Umami, Fathom and Simple Analytics sit here, and they are the direct replacements for the traffic reports in Google Analytics.

Product analytics answers questions about behaviour inside an application: which users reached a feature, where they dropped out of a signup funnel, who came back next week. PostHog, OpenPanel, Mixpanel and Amplitude sit here. They ask you to define events in code, which is more work to set up and far more precise afterwards.

A third group records what people did on a page. Heatmaps and session replay, offered by OpenReplay and Microsoft Clarity, are the usual replacements for Hotjar. They complement either type of analytics rather than replacing it.

1. Plausible: best simple, privacy-first dashboard for most sites

Plausible is a lightweight, cookie-free web analytics tool that shows traffic on a single page, available as a managed cloud service or as a self-hosted Community Edition. Where Google Analytics offers a large set of reports, explorations and event configuration, Plausible keeps the dashboard clutter-free and the tracking script small.

It supports custom events and goals for conversions, and the vendor describes the product as GDPR, CCPA and PECR compliant. The code is open source under AGPL-3.0, so self-hosting is an option if you would rather not pay for the cloud plans.

• Best for: bloggers, agencies and small businesses that want a readable traffic dashboard without training.
• Watch out for: the hosted service has a trial but no free plan, and it is built for traffic reporting rather than deep product analytics such as cohorts.

2. Matomo: best open-source match you can host yourself

Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform written in PHP and MySQL that you run on your own server, with Matomo Cloud as the managed route. It is built around data ownership, which suits organisations that must keep visitor records in-house.

Reports update in real time, tracking uses a JavaScript tag, and the self-hosted Community edition is free under GPL-3.0. Enlisted also lists mobile and intranet analytics among its topics.

• Best for: privacy-regulated organisations, agencies and teams that want full reports on a server they control.
• Watch out for: self-hosting means you maintain a PHP and MySQL application, including updates and database load as traffic grows.

3. Umami: best MIT-licensed, self-hosted analytics

Umami is a cookie-free web analytics platform that covers traffic, campaigns, behaviour, conversions and revenue, available self-hosted or in the cloud. Its MIT licence is a permissive one, and the catalogue shows recent commits on GitHub.

Beyond page views it offers cohort analysis, audience segmentation and user journey views, plus optional two-factor authentication. That puts it a step above the minimal counters.

• Best for: developers and agencies hosting analytics for several client sites.
• Watch out for: if you self-host, you handle the database, upgrades and backups yourself.

4. Rybbit: best open-source option that adds session replay and funnels

Rybbit is a cookieless, open-source web and product analytics platform offered as a hosted service or for self-hosting. It reports sessions, pageviews, bounce rate and duration like a web analytics tool, then adds funnels, retention, user journeys, custom events and session replays of real visits.

That mix suits teams who would otherwise run a traffic tool and a replay tool side by side. It supports multiple organisations and unlimited sites, and uses AGPL-3.0.

• Best for: small product teams that want traffic reports, funnels and replay in one open-source tool.
• Watch out for: the hosted service has a trial but no free plan, and AGPL-3.0 has network copyleft terms if you modify it and run it as a service.

5. Fathom Analytics: best hosted-only option for people who do not want to run anything

Fathom Analytics is a hosted, privacy-focused website analytics service that tracks visitors without cookies and presents data on a single simple dashboard. It adds email reports, an API and a UTM builder for campaign links, and it offers EU data isolation for European traffic.

It is closed source with no self-hosted version, which is the trade-off for a service that someone else operates.

• Best for: agencies and site owners who want a managed, reporting-friendly dashboard for client sites.
• Watch out for: no free plan, only a trial, and pricing that scales with monthly pageviews. See the Fathom Analytics alternatives page if you want to compare it.

6. Simple Analytics: best EU-hosted option with a free plan for hobby sites

Simple Analytics is a cookieless, privacy-focused analytics service hosted in the EU. It collects no personal data or visitor IDs, and it offers a side-by-side comparison with GA4 traffic, which is handy when you are validating a migration.

Enlisted's data lists a free plan for hobby sites alongside a trial, with self-serve plans that scale with pageviews. Enlisted lists measuring traffic lost to consent rejection as one of its use cases.

• Best for: European sites and anyone who wants to compare numbers with Google Analytics during a switch.
• Watch out for: closed source and hosted only, so there is no self-hosting. More options are on the Simple Analytics alternatives page.

7. PostHog: best all-in-one when you need product analytics

PostHog is an open-source product platform that combines product analytics, a web analytics dashboard, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys and error tracking. It can replace several single-purpose vendors at once, and it can be self-hosted or used as a cloud service.

Every product has a free monthly tier, and pay-as-you-go pricing applies only to usage beyond the free limits. The catalogue lists the licence as Other, so read the repository's licence files if that matters for your use.

• Best for: product teams that want analytics, replay and experiments from one vendor or one self-hosted stack.
• Watch out for: it is much broader than a traffic counter. If you only need page views and referrers, a simpler tool is faster to read.

8. OpenPanel: best open-source Mixpanel alternative with web analytics too

OpenPanel is an open-source web and product analytics platform positioned as an alternative to Mixpanel, with funnels, cohorts, user profiles, session replay, built-in A/B testing and cookieless tracking. SDKs cover web, mobile and server-side, and there is an MCP server for AI clients.

Self-hosting is free under AGPL-3.0. The cloud version is priced by monthly event volume, with unlimited users, so cost follows how much you track.

• Best for: teams leaving Mixpanel for something open source, or wanting product and web analytics in one lighter tool.
• Watch out for: event-based cloud pricing means high-volume tracking raises the bill, so plan your events deliberately.

9. Mixpanel: best hosted product analytics with a free plan

Mixpanel is a hosted product analytics platform that tracks user events and adds session replay, experiments, feature flags and AI-generated insights. It is closed source and cannot be self-hosted.

The free plan includes unlimited seats and a monthly event allowance, while the Growth plan is priced by event volume and Enterprise is quoted. If you are searching for Mixpanel alternatives because of cost or data control, PostHog and OpenPanel above are the open-source routes.

• Best for: product teams that want funnel and retention analysis without running infrastructure.
• Watch out for: you must plan which events to track, so it is the wrong tool for a quick traffic report.

10. Amplitude: best for teams that also want experimentation

Amplitude is a product analytics platform with session replay, heatmaps, guides and surveys, feature and web experimentation, feature management and AI tools. It is hosted only and closed source.

A free plan exists with a monthly event cap, and the higher tiers use custom, event-based pricing through sales. For people looking at Amplitude alternatives, the main differences from the open-source options are hosting and the experimentation tooling bundled in.

• Best for: product and marketing teams that run experiments alongside behavioural analytics.
• Watch out for: higher tiers are negotiated, so costs are harder to predict than with published self-serve plans.

11. OpenReplay: best self-hosted Hotjar-style session replay

OpenReplay is a self-hosted session replay, cobrowsing and product analytics platform that keeps session data inside your own infrastructure. Hotjar is a hosted product for heatmaps, recordings and feedback surveys, and it is now part of Contentsquare. OpenReplay answers the same "what did the visitor actually do?" question without sending sessions to a third party.

Capture-time masking and a private mode help with sensitive fields, and DevTools context makes replays useful for debugging. Self-hosting is free; the catalogue lists the licence as Other.

• Best for: engineering and support teams that want to reproduce user-reported bugs with data kept in-house.
• Watch out for: it focuses on replay and usage, not traffic and campaign reporting, so you still want a web analytics tool next to it.

12. Microsoft Clarity: best free heatmaps and session replay

Microsoft Clarity is a behavioural analytics library that records DOM changes and interactions to produce session replay and heatmaps. Enlisted lists the MIT-licensed client-side library, and the same code powers Microsoft's hosted service. Microsoft's site describes that service as free with no traffic limits.

The repository is the collection library, not a full backend you can run yourself, so day-to-day use means Microsoft's hosted dashboard. Teams comparing Hotjar alternatives will find it is a no-cost route to heatmaps, and Crazy Egg is a hosted heatmap and recording service that also has a free plan.

• Best for: site owners who want heatmaps and recordings without a bill.
• Watch out for: data goes to Microsoft's hosted service, and it does not replace traffic or campaign reporting.

Other options worth a look

A few tools did not make the main list but suit specific cases:

• GoatCounter is a lightweight Go app, hosted or self-hosted, for blogs that want counts without unique identifiers.
• Ackee and Counterscale are minimal MIT-licensed trackers; Counterscale deploys on Cloudflare Workers so your data stays in your Cloudflare account.
• GoAccess reads web server logs and shows a terminal or live HTML dashboard, which means cookie-free analytics with no tracking script at all.
• Pirsch is a server-side, cookie-free analytics tool with a Go core and ClickHouse storage, and Swetrix adds error tracking and performance monitoring to cookieless analytics.
• Tianji combines website analytics, uptime checks and server status in one self-hostable app; the Datadog alternatives guide covers the monitoring side.
• Heap and Kissmetrics are hosted product analytics platforms if Mixpanel and Amplitude are not a fit. Usermaven combines marketing attribution with product analytics, and marketers weighing CRM options can read the HubSpot alternatives guide.

Are there free web analytics tools?

Yes, but "free" means three different things here:

• Free software you host yourself. Umami, Matomo's Community edition, the Plausible Community Edition, GoAccess and Counterscale are free to license. You pay for hosting (for Counterscale, your Cloudflare plan) and spend time on upkeep.
• Free hosted plans. Simple Analytics lists a free plan for hobby sites, GoatCounter's README describes a free hosted service, Microsoft Clarity is described as free by Microsoft, and PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude each have a free tier built around product analytics.
• Free trials only. The hosted services from Plausible, Fathom Analytics and Rybbit offer trials, then charge, so they are not free for an ongoing site.

Limits on free tiers change, so check each vendor's current terms before you build on one.

Which Google Analytics alternative should you choose?

Enlisted's Google Analytics alternatives page lists more, and the analytics category covers the rest.

Switching from Google Analytics: what to expect

Run the new tool next to Google Analytics for a few weeks before you cut over. Cookieless tools count visitors differently: Pirsch, for example, builds a fingerprint from a hash of the IP address, User-Agent, date and a salt, so unique-visitor figures will not match a cookie-based tool exactly. Compare trends, not individual totals.

List the conversions you rely on before you start, and recreate them as goals or events in the new tool. Self-hosting adds an operations task, because someone has to patch and back up the server and database. If you would rather not, Plausible, Matomo, Umami, Rybbit, PostHog and OpenPanel all offer a vendor-hosted cloud, and Fathom Analytics and Simple Analytics are hosted only.