Google Analytics is free and everywhere, but a growing number of developers and small teams are moving away from it — not because it's expensive, but because of what it costs in a different way: cookie banners, GDPR headaches, a bloated dashboard, and handing every visitor's behavior to Google. The good news is there's now a real market of lightweight, privacy-first analytics tools built specifically to replace it. Here are five worth knowing, all with genuinely different trade-offs.
The short version
If you want the simplest possible drop-in with a clean dashboard, look at Plausible or Umami. If you want something free forever and self-hostable with almost zero setup, GoatCounter is hard to beat. If you also care about product metrics (funnels, cohorts, session replay), OpenPanel or PostHog go further than pageview counting.
Compare at a glance
| Tool | Best for | Self-hosted option | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible | Simple, polished, privacy-first web analytics | Yes (open source) | From €6/month |
| Umami | Fast, minimal Google Analytics replacement | Yes, free | Free self-hosted, paid cloud |
| GoatCounter | The lightest possible no-cookie tracker | Yes, free for heavy traffic | Free |
| OpenPanel | Analytics + product metrics (funnels, cohorts, replay) | Yes, unlimited events (AGPL) | Free self-hosted, cloud from $20/month |
| PostHog | Full product analytics beyond pageviews | Yes | Free, Pro from $49/month |
Plausible: the polished default
Plausible is probably the best-known Google Analytics alternative for a reason: it's genuinely simple, the dashboard fits on one screen, and it doesn't use cookies — so in most cases you can skip the cookie banner entirely. It's open source and self-hostable if you want to run it yourself, or you can just pay a small monthly fee for the hosted version. The main honest limitation is that it's intentionally basic: don't expect deep funnels or session replay here, just clean, accurate traffic numbers.
Umami: free, fast, and does the job
Umami is the closest thing to a like-for-like Google Analytics swap: familiar-feeling reports, but privacy-focused and refreshingly fast to load. Self-hosting is completely free, which makes it a favorite for developers who already run a small VPS and don't want another recurring bill. Umami Cloud exists if you'd rather not maintain the server yourself. Like Plausible, it trades some advanced segmentation for simplicity — it won't replace a full product-analytics suite.
GoatCounter: as lightweight as it gets
GoatCounter's whole pitch is minimalism: it counts visits without tracking individual people, skips cookies and personal data entirely, and is free for reasonable use on personal or small business sites (with a free self-hosted option even at high traffic). If your needs are basically "how many people visited, and from where," without any bells and whistles, this is the leanest option on this list. It won't give you e-commerce revenue tracking or behavioral funnels — that's not what it's for.
OpenPanel: analytics that grows into product metrics
OpenPanel is the pick if you expect to outgrow simple pageview counting. It combines standard web analytics with funnels, cohorts, session replay and revenue tracking — territory usually reserved for tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude. It's open source (AGPL-3.0) with an unlimited-events self-hosted tier, or a pay-per-event cloud plan starting at $20/month with a 30-day trial. The trade-off is setup complexity: this is a more capable tool, and it shows in the onboarding.
PostHog: when you want the whole product-analytics stack
PostHog goes furthest beyond "analytics" in the traditional sense — it's an open-source product analytics platform with feature flags, session replay, and A/B testing baked in, and it's self-hostable if you want full data control. The free tier is real, with a Pro plan starting at $49/month once you need more volume or advanced features. It's a heavier tool than the others here, and can feel like overkill if all you want is traffic numbers — but if you're already thinking about product metrics, it saves you from stitching together multiple tools later.
Which one should you pick?
For a marketing site or blog where you just want clean traffic numbers without cookie-banner guilt, start with Plausible or Umami — both are close to drop-in replacements. If you're self-hosting on a budget and want the absolute minimum footprint, GoatCounter is the leanest choice. And if you're building a product (not just a site) and know you'll eventually want funnels, cohorts or session replay, save yourself a migration and start with OpenPanel or PostHog directly. Every one of these respects visitor privacy far more than Google Analytics by default — the real decision is how much analytical depth you actually need.