Plausible and Simple Analytics are two of the cleanest Google Analytics alternatives.
Both are privacy-first. Both are cookieless. Both are lightweight. Both avoid the GA4 experience of opening a dashboard and immediately needing a nap.
The real choice is not “which one is good?”
They are both good.
The real choice is:
Do you want more useful features, or do you want maximum minimalism?
Quick Verdict
| Need | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum simplicity | Simple Analytics | Dead-simple dashboard, least data collected |
| More actionable insights | Plausible | Funnels, events, revenue, SEO, segments |
| Open source / self-hosting | Plausible | Fully open source with self-host option |
| Predictable pricing at high traffic | Simple Analytics | Flat pricing can be easier to reason about |
| Best overall for most sites | Plausible | Better feature-to-price ratio |
My default recommendation: Plausible for most websites.
My exception: Simple Analytics if you want the absolute simplest possible privacy-first analytics.
What Is Plausible?
Plausible is a lightweight, open-source Google Analytics alternative.
It gives you the traffic data most site owners actually need:
- Visitors
- Pageviews
- Top pages
- Referrers
- Countries
- Devices
- UTM campaigns
- Goals and events
- Funnels on higher plans
- Ecommerce revenue tracking on higher plans
- Google Search Console integration
The appeal is that Plausible stays simple while still giving you room to grow.
You can start with a basic dashboard, then add goals, custom events, funnels, shared dashboards, or self-hosting when you need more control.
Plausible is also open source and self-hostable, which is a big deal if you care about owning your analytics stack.
Best for: startups, SaaS sites, marketing pages, blogs, docs sites, and founders who want privacy-friendly analytics without giving up useful data.
What Is Simple Analytics?
Simple Analytics is exactly what the name says.
It is a privacy-first analytics tool that keeps the dashboard extremely minimal. No cookies. No fingerprinting. No creepy user tracking.
You get the essentials:
- Pageviews
- Referrers
- Countries
- Devices
- Events and goals on paid plans
- Trendlines
- Clean reports
- AI chat for asking questions about your data
Simple Analytics is for people who want to know what happened without building an analytics hobby.
It collects as little data as possible, which makes it attractive for privacy purists, personal sites, small businesses, and teams that want analytics without a consent-banner headache.
The tradeoff: it is less flexible than Plausible, and you cannot self-host it.
Best for: blogs, personal sites, small business sites, privacy-focused teams, and anyone who wants “how many people visited and where did they come from?” without extra dashboards.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Plausible | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy model | Cookieless, anonymized signals | Cookieless, minimal data collection |
| Dashboard | Simple but more powerful | Ultra-minimal |
| Events/goals | Stronger | Basic and clean |
| Funnels | Yes, on Business plan | No dedicated advanced funnel tool |
| Ecommerce revenue | Yes, on Business plan | Not the main focus |
| SEO data | Google Search Console integration | Basic traffic/referrer view |
| AI referrals | Tracks AI tool referrals | Simpler referrer reporting |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | No |
| Best fit | Growing sites that need more insight | Privacy minimalists who want simple stats |
Pricing
Pricing changes, so always check the official pages before making a decision.
As of May 2026, the rough shape is:
Plausible
- Starter: about $9/mo or $90/yr for small sites, including goals and custom events.
- Growth: about $14/mo or $140/yr for more sites, team members, and sharing.
- Business: about $19/mo or $190/yr for more serious use cases, including funnels, ecommerce revenue, custom properties, API access, and Looker Studio.
- Enterprise: custom pricing for SSO, raw exports, dedicated support, and huge traffic.
Plausible is cheaper for small sites and more flexible if you want advanced features later.
Simple Analytics
- Free: limited but useful for testing.
- Simple: around GBP 15/mo for one user, 10 websites, and 3 years of retention.
- Team: around GBP 40/mo plus extra users, with more sites, more retention, custom views, roles, API/export features, and ad-blocker bypass.
- Enterprise: custom.
Simple Analytics can be easier to reason about if you want predictable pricing and do not want to think in pageview tiers.
Privacy
Both are privacy-first and cookieless.
Both are built as alternatives to GA4’s complexity and data harvesting.
In normal analytics-only setups, both are commonly used without cookie banners because they avoid cookies and personal-data-heavy tracking.
The difference is philosophical:
Simple Analytics tries to collect the least possible data. It is the privacy purist option.
Plausible uses minimal anonymized signals to make analytics more useful while staying lightweight and privacy-friendly.
If your privacy posture needs to be as strict as possible, Simple Analytics wins.
If you want privacy plus more useful product/marketing data, Plausible wins.
Simple rule: Choose Simple Analytics when you want less data on purpose. Choose Plausible when you want privacy-first analytics that can still help you make decisions.
Features
Plausible has more depth.
It gives you:
- Conversion funnels
- Custom events
- Custom properties
- Ecommerce revenue tracking
- Scroll depth tracking
- AI tool referrals
- Google Search Console data
- UTM campaign tracking
- Channel grouping
- Shared dashboards
- Real-time updates
- Bot filtering and spam protection
Simple Analytics keeps the surface area smaller:
- Core traffic metrics
- Referrers
- Devices
- Countries
- Trends
- Events/goals on paid plans
- AI chat for querying your data
- A very clean single-screen dashboard
This is why the choice comes down to features vs minimalism.
Plausible gives you more ways to understand what happened.
Simple Analytics gives you fewer ways to get distracted.
Dashboard Experience
Both dashboards are good because both are boring in the right way.
Simple Analytics feels more “set it and forget it.”
Plausible feels more like “I can still run a marketing site with this.”
If you just want to check traffic once a week, Simple Analytics is lovely.
If you care about campaigns, goals, conversions, and SEO pages, Plausible is more useful.
Who Should Choose Plausible?
Choose Plausible if you:
- Want more actionable insights.
- Care about funnels, goals, events, or revenue tracking.
- Want Google Search Console integration.
- Like open-source software.
- Want the option to self-host.
- Run a startup, SaaS, content site, or marketing site that may grow.
Plausible is the better overall pick for most people because it gives you more room without becoming GA4 soup.
Who Should Choose Simple Analytics?
Choose Simple Analytics if you:
- Want the simplest possible analytics.
- Are a privacy purist.
- Prefer flat, predictable pricing.
- Do not care about self-hosting.
- Run a blog, personal site, or small business site.
- Like the idea of asking analytics questions through AI chat.
Simple Analytics is excellent if you want fewer knobs and less noise.
Bottom Line
Both tools are outstanding.
Plausible is the more capable, future-proof choice for most people. It gives you privacy-first analytics without giving up useful features.
Simple Analytics is the winner if you want the lightest possible touch and maximum privacy minimalism.
My recommendation: try both. Setup takes a few minutes. If you want the best balance of simplicity and power, you will probably end up with Plausible. If you want radical minimalism, Simple Analytics will feel better.
For more options, read my full Google Analytics alternatives guide.
One More Option: DataFast
If you sell something, there is one more tool I would look at: DataFast.
Plausible and Simple Analytics are great for traffic analytics.
DataFast is different. It connects traffic to revenue through Stripe and Lemon Squeezy, so you can see which pages, sources, campaigns, and countries actually make money.
That matters if you run SaaS, ecommerce, paid courses, affiliate sites, or indie products.
The short version is this:
Use Plausible or Simple Analytics if you mainly care about visitors.
Use DataFast if you care about revenue.
