Lightweight web analytics built for fast-loading websites

Most websites are slowed down by the very tools used to measure them. Google Analytics is one of the heaviest third-party scripts you can add to a site, and it brings hidden costs beyond just file size. Plausible is built differently: a minimal script that collects what matters without adding meaningful weight to your pages.

1. Why should I care about my website speed?
2. Why is Google Analytics so heavy?
3. Why is Plausible lightweight?
4. How can I test my website speed?
5. What else can I do to have a fast loading website?
6. Your analytics script loads on every single page
7. Give Plausible a try as your lightweight analytics tool

Why should I care about my website speed?

Here are some of the key reasons site speed matters:

1. People are impatient and the slower your site loads the higher chance a significant part of your first-time visitors will close the browser tab or click on the back button. Page load time directly impacts the bounce rate. Studies consistently show that bounce rates rise sharply as load time increases. Aim for your site to load within 2 seconds.
2. Search engines such as Google have page speed as one of their ranking factors which determine how sites rank in the search results. A slower page speed may result in your site ranking lower and getting fewer visitors from search than a faster loading site. Learn more about Core Web Vitals.
3. Most traffic is now on mobile devices with slower connections and limited data plans. A heavier page takes longer to load and costs your visitors real data. Speed matters more on mobile than anywhere else.
4. Page speed directly affects conversions. Slow pages lose sales, sign-ups and leads. Even a small improvement in load time can have a measurable impact on revenue.
5. A lighter and faster site means less data is transmitted and less electricity is used. A lighter site emits less carbon for every visitor.

Why is Google Analytics so heavy?

Analytics scripts are among the most impactful third-party resources you can add to a site. Unlike an image that loads once, an analytics script fires on every page load for every visitor, across the entire life of your website.

Google Analytics is by far the most widely used analytics platform on the web. Its tracking code is large because it has to be: it is a centralized platform built to support advertising, remarketing, conversion tracking, cross-site audience building and hundreds of individual reports. All of that functionality gets downloaded by your visitors’ browsers on every page they visit.

GA4 also makes multiple network requests on each page load, not just one. That means more connections to external Google servers, adding latency on top of the raw script weight.

Google Analytics tracks hundreds of different metrics across a large number of built-in reports. Most website owners don’t use the vast majority of those features, but they pay the performance cost for all of them on every page load.

Google Analytics is overkill for the problem most people are actually trying to solve: figuring out how many people visit their site, where they came from and what content they read. It is also a privacy-unfriendly solution to that problem.

For site owners who only need simple traffic data, it is more than most people need.

Why is Plausible lightweight?

The size difference between Plausible and other analytics tools is not an accident. It comes from what we chose not to build.

Plausible tracks only what most site owners actually care about: how many visitors came, where they came from and what they read. We don’t track individuals, build user profiles or support advertising features. Less to collect means less code to do it.

There are also some less obvious savings when you switch.

No cookie consent banner needed. Because Plausible doesn’t use cookies or collect personal data, you don’t need a GDPR cookie consent banner. Those banners are themselves JavaScript-heavy. Tools like OneTrust and Cookiebot add their own weight and latency to every page load on top of the analytics script. Switching to Plausible can eliminate that entire layer of overhead.

Better Core Web Vitals scores. Google uses Core Web Vitals as ranking signals, including Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint. Third-party scripts are one of the most common causes of poor Core Web Vitals scores because they compete for network resources and main thread time even when loaded asynchronously. The Plausible script is designed not to get in the way: it loads after your page has finished rendering and sends a single small request.

One request, not many. Each time a visitor loads a page, Plausible sends a single small request to record the visit. GA4 makes multiple calls to various Google servers. More connections mean more latency, especially on mobile networks or slower connections.

How can I test my website speed?

GTmetrix is a free tool for measuring the speed of your site. It gives you a PageSpeed score, total load time and total page size at a glance.

The Waterfall chart inside GTmetrix is particularly useful. It shows every resource your site loads with its size and loading timeline. You can identify your analytics script in this list and see exactly what it adds to your total page weight.

What else can I do to have a fast loading website?

Here are some of the actions you can take to speed up your website:

1. When you plan to add a new element to your website, ask yourself if it is necessary. You’ll find that many elements are unnecessary and you may consider leaving them out.
2. Audit your third-party scripts. Chat widgets, social embeds, marketing tools and analytics all add weight. Each script you remove or replace with a lighter alternative improves load time for every visitor on every page.
3. Use system fonts where possible. System fonts are already on the devices of your visitors so no extra page weight or loading time is added.
4. Use fewer images and videos. Images and videos are much heavier than text so reducing multimedia can make a significant difference.
5. Optimize the images you do use by resizing and compressing them. Your visitors won’t notice much difference. ImageOptim is a great free tool for this.
6. Use modern image formats such as WebP or AVIF. They produce significantly smaller files than PNG or JPEG with no visible loss in quality, and are now supported by all major browsers.
7. Implement lazy loading on images and video so they don’t load until the visitor scrolls to them.

Your analytics script loads on every single page

Analytics is not a one-time cost. Your tracking script fires on every page load, for every visitor, for the entire life of your website.

That means even a small reduction in script size compounds quickly. A site switching from a heavy analytics tool to a lightweight one reduces the total data transferred by gigabytes each month. Multiply that across millions of websites making a similar switch and the reduction in bandwidth, electricity use and carbon emissions becomes significant.

Try running your site through the Website Carbon Calculator. It estimates the CO2 produced per visitor and gives you a sense of your site’s cumulative footprint. Replacing your analytics script is one of the most effective changes you can make because it affects every page on your site, not just one.

Give Plausible a try as your lightweight analytics tool

Plausible is open source, privacy-friendly and built to be as small as possible. No cookies, no personal data collection and no bloated script competing with your content for bandwidth.

Start your 30-day free trial and see what your site looks like without the overhead of Google Analytics.