| Name | Payment | Min Monthly Payment | Script Size | Session Tracking | Open Source | Claims "GDPR Compliant" | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | Free | - | 73kb | Cookie based session | The most used. | ||
| Simple Web Analytics | Free | - | 0kb | HTTP Cache based | X | Fastest setup. No external script. | |
| GoatCounter | Freemium | - | 2.5kb | Elaborate hashed IP based session | X | X | Detailed per page access. |
| StatCounter | Freemium | - | 35kb | Cookie based session | Your data is statistically evaluated. | ||
| Splitbee | Freemium (Steep pricing) | - | 8kb | Cookie based session | Specialized in A/B testing with all common features. | ||
| Kindmetrics | Paid but currently free Beta | 6€ | 2kb | Hashed IP based session | X | X | Straightforward Interface. Still Beta. |
| Plausible | Paid | 6$ | 4kb | Hashed IP based session | X | X | Clean Interface. |
| Gauges | Paid | 6$ | 4kb | Cookie based session | Seems alrighty. But I got daily unsubscribable mails. | ||
| Fathom | Paid | 14$ | 7kb | Hashed IP based session | X | X | Good overview with bad color contrast. |
| Matamo | Paid | 19$ | 84kb | Cookie based session | X | Most advanced open source solution. | |
| Simple Analytics | Paid | 19$ | 4kb | Inspects the referrer | X | Best overview, I like the clean interface. |
| Left Out | Reason. |
|---|---|
| Clicky | Not able to use the user interface. |
| AWStats | Log based. |
| W3Perl | Log based. |
| GoAccess | Log based (and looks nice). |
| Yandex Metrica | [...] we process huge amount of anonymous data on users' behavior [...] |
| Open Web Analytics | Only self hosting is supported, no service offering. |
| KISSmetrics | For enterprise cosumters. |
| Etracker | Webdesign does not awaken my trust (personal opinion). |
| Adobe Analytics | I belive enterprise focused. User Interface looks convoluted. |
| Mint | Officially discountinued. |
| Woopra | Looks like it's for an enterprise audience. |
| Chiffre | Not launched yet. |
Notes
If I forgot something, write it in the comments so I can update it. The sorting is by ascending price, with free services on top. This listing was carefully researched by me and it took quite some time actually. Being the author of Simple Web Analytics I wanted to get an overview of the market, especially on free of charge services, here there are really only a handful of alternatives. Although the comparison table does track if services claim to be "GDPR Compatible", that information has to be taken with some grains of salts. In my personal opinion services that do not use any kind of session at all (Simple Analytics and Simple Web Analytics) are the more privacy friendly. Next comes - in my opinion - GoatCounter, which puts a lot of effort in making something session based being more privacy friendly. A service that I actually do want to highlight due to a great overview with only one glance is Simple Analytics. Although strictly comparing features it is quite expensive and tracking unique users by inspecting the referrer I find very elegant also from a privacy perspective, I'd love to know which accuracy can be achieved with this method. I hope this gives an overview of existing Web Analytics services, let me know in the comments if I forgot something.
Top comments (12)
I am the person behind Kindmetrics.io - Which is pretty new but in open beta. It is open source and is GDPR compliant. The unique thing technically is that Kindmetrics is built in crystal.
Right now Kindmetrics use hashed ip-based session.
Done!
Shameless plug, I'm working on Chiffre.io. It's end-to-end encrypted to make sure not even I can see visitors data, only the site owner. It has free and paid plans, and is going to be open for a public beta soon.
Interesting concept. I'd be interested in how exactly that is technically achieved. I am not adding it, because it's not officially launched yet. Just ping me when it's done and I'll take another look.
When implemented as described that would actually combine the advantages of a cloud service with the advantages of self hosting, right? I imagine there are quite a lot of interesting technical aspects actually. I need to take another look when it's done :-)
Exactly, the idea is to have the ease of use of a SaaS service with the security that usually comes with self-hosting.
It's done by using public key cryptography: visitors encrypt their analytics data using the website public key, those encrypted events are sent to the server and passed to the website owner, which decrypts them and runs the analysis in the browser, so that the service never sees any clear text data.
You would like to check out pageinsight.app. It has a 30-day unlimited-use free trial period.
Payment : paid
Min monthly payment : $5
Script size : 1.6kb
Session tracking : Hashed IP based session
Open source : No
GDPR compliant : Yes
Thanks.
You could add our platform splitbee.io aswell! It's free for up to 1000 monthly users.; 3.4kb bundle; session tracking: cookie based; gdpr compliant: not yet; open source: no;
Thanks :)
Done!
To find out the script size I opened the given tracking script after registration ( -> cdn.splitbee.io/sb.js), pasted it in my Firefox and with inspect element I came to the conclusion that it is 8.12kb. You wrote 3.4kb, let me know if I am missing something.
I think 1000 free monthly users is quite reasonable actually but the pricing is quite steep if you want the basic features only I would say. But yeah of course you get also the A/B testing that is usually not included.
Thanks for the feedback!
We actually changed our pricing now! :)
5000 page views/month are free, after that, we start at 19$/month
Would love to see my product hockeystack.com on this list! One of the smallest script sizes 😎, powerful and privacy-friendly
Nice summarizing it.
Only what is left, is how do I convert analytics to value.
Hey,
The way I understand you comment, it depends. It's actually already something to know if there are users on a website at all. So if you for example can know that there are regular users in some small website you once wrote and forgot about, there could be some value in knowing that.
Cheers