If you've been putting off migrating away from Google Analytics, I get it. I dragged my feet for over a year. But after GDPR enforcement ramped up, cookie banner fatigue set in, and I watched my GA dashboard load times creep past "make coffee" territory, I finally pulled the trigger.
Here's what I learned comparing three privacy-focused analytics tools across multiple projects.
Why Bother Switching?
Let's be honest — Google Analytics works. It's free, it's powerful, and everyone knows it. But there are real reasons developers are leaving:
- GDPR/privacy compliance is increasingly painful with GA. You need cookie consent banners, data processing agreements, and to worry about data transfers.
- GA4's interface is... a lot. If you just want to know how many people read your blog post, you shouldn't need a PhD in event-based analytics.
- Page bloat. The GA script isn't small, and it loads additional resources. Privacy-focused alternatives are typically under 5KB.
- Ad blockers kill your GA numbers. Some estimates suggest 30-40% of developer audiences use ad blockers that strip GA entirely.
The three tools I've spent real time with are Umami, Plausible, and Fathom. They all promise privacy-first analytics without cookies, but they take different approaches.
The Quick Comparison
| Feature | Umami | Plausible | Fathom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted option | Yes (free, open source) | Yes (Community Edition) | No |
| Cloud/hosted option | Yes (Umami Cloud) | Yes | Yes (only option) |
| Cookie-free | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GDPR compliant | Yes (no personal data) | Yes (EU-owned, EU-hosted) | Yes (intelligent routing) |
| Script size | ~2KB | ~1KB | ~2KB |
| Open source | MIT License | AGPL | No |
| Custom events | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Umami: The Developer's Pick
Umami is what I run on most of my personal projects. It's fully open source under the MIT license, and the self-hosted setup is genuinely straightforward if you're comfortable with Docker.
Self-Hosting Umami
# docker-compose.yml — dead simple setup
version: '3'
services:
umami:
image: ghcr.io/umami-software/umami:postgresql-latest
ports:
- "3000:3000"
environment:
DATABASE_URL: postgresql://umami:umami@db:5432/umami
# Generate this with: openssl rand -base64 32
APP_SECRET: your-random-secret-here
depends_on:
db:
condition: service_healthy
db:
image: postgres:15-alpine
environment:
POSTGRES_DB: umami
POSTGRES_USER: umami
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: umami
volumes:
- umami-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U umami"]
interval: 5s
timeout: 5s
retries: 5
volumes:
umami-db:
Run docker compose up -d and you've got analytics. No cookies, no consent banners, no third-party data sharing. The tracking script is tiny:
<!-- Add to your site's <head> -->
<script
defer
src="https://your-umami-instance.com/script.js"
data-website-id="your-website-id"
></script>
What I like about Umami is the dashboard. It shows you exactly what you need — pageviews, visitors, referrers, countries, devices — without the overwhelming complexity of GA4. The UI is clean and fast.
Umami also supports tracking custom events, which is useful if you need more than basic pageview data:
// Track a button click or form submission
umami.track('signup-button-click', {
plan: 'pro',
source: 'landing-page'
});
The tradeoff: self-hosting means you're responsible for uptime, backups, and updates. If you don't want that overhead, Umami Cloud offers a hosted option, though you'll want to check their current pricing tiers on umami.is.
Plausible: Best Cloud Experience
Plausible is what I recommend when someone wants to set it up and forget about it. It's an EU-based company, the data stays in the EU, and they're very transparent about their infrastructure.
Plausible's script is impressively small — around 1KB. Integration is just as simple as Umami:
<script
defer
data-domain="yourdomain.com"
src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"
></script>
The dashboard is opinionated in a good way. One page, no navigation rabbit holes. You see your traffic, where it comes from, and what pages people visit. That's it. For most sites, that's all you actually need.
Self-hosting Plausible is possible through their Community Edition, but their primary pitch is the hosted service. Pricing starts at $9/month for up to 10K monthly pageviews (verify current pricing on their site — it changes).
The tradeoff: Plausible's hosted pricing scales with pageviews, which can get expensive if your site has significant traffic. The Community Edition uses the AGPL license, which has implications if you're building a commercial product around it.
Fathom: Premium and Polished
Fathom is the most "premium" option. No self-hosted version — it's a paid product, and they lean into that. The upside is it just works, with excellent uptime and performance.
Fathom's unique angle is what they call "intelligent routing" — they route EU visitor data through EU-based infrastructure to maintain compliance. It's a thoughtful approach for sites with global audiences.
The tradeoff: Fathom is the most expensive option, and there's no self-hosted escape hatch. If you're running a personal blog or side project, it might be hard to justify the cost. But for business sites where you want zero maintenance and strong compliance, it's solid.
Migration Steps: GA to Any of These
The good news is that migrating is straightforward since none of these tools require cookies or complex setup:
- Sign up or deploy your chosen tool
-
Add the tracking script to your site's
<head>(see snippets above) - Remove the GA script and any cookie consent banners that were only there for GA
- Set up custom events if you were tracking conversions in GA
- Run both in parallel for a week or two to build confidence
One thing to note: you won't get historical data migration. These tools track from the moment you add them. I'd suggest running your new tool alongside GA for at least two weeks before cutting over, just so you can sanity-check the numbers.
So Which One Should You Pick?
- Choose Umami if you want full control, love self-hosting, or need something completely free. It's MIT-licensed, the community is active, and it supports both PostgreSQL and MySQL.
- Choose Plausible if you want a great hosted experience with EU data residency and you're comfortable with pageview-based pricing.
- Choose Fathom if you're running a business site, want zero maintenance, and compliance is a top priority.
Personally, I run Umami on a small VPS for my personal projects (costs me about $5/month for the server) and use Plausible for client work where I don't want to manage infrastructure.
All three are massive improvements over the GA4 experience for content sites and developer blogs. The script sizes are smaller, the dashboards are faster, and you can ditch the cookie banners. That last point alone was worth the switch for me.
One More Thing
Don't overthink this. If you're spending more time evaluating analytics tools than actually writing content or building features, just pick one and go. You can always switch later — the integration is literally one script tag. The best analytics tool is the one you actually check.
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