Open source Google Analytics alternative
Most analytics tools are black boxes. You add their script to your site, hand over your visitor data with no way to verify how it’s actually handled. Plausible is different: the entire codebase is public, auditable and available for anyone to inspect or run themselves.
- What is open source web analytics?
- What data does Plausible collect?
- What license is Plausible released under?
- Can Plausible Analytics be self-hosted?
- Is Google Analytics open source?
- Why is Plausible not free while Google Analytics is?
- Plausible is open in other ways too
- Try Plausible
What is open source web analytics?
Being open source means our source code is available and accessible on GitHub. Anyone can read it, inspect it and review how it works, how data is handled and what gets collected. There are no hidden behaviors.
This transparency is what makes open source software more trustworthy than closed alternatives. You don’t have to take our word for it. The project has thousands of stars on GitHub and is trusted by thousands of paying subscribers including Hugging Face, Basecamp, Ghost, MongoDB, the Open Source Initiative and the Python Software Foundation.
What data does Plausible collect?
Plausible collects only what you need to understand your traffic: page views, referral sources, the countries and devices your visitors use and which pages they read. No personal data, no cookies, no cross-site tracking and no user profiles.
Because nothing personal is collected, Plausible is compliant with GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulations out of the box. No cookie consent banner required. All data is hosted on EU-based servers and never processed by US cloud providers.
What license is Plausible released under?
Plausible is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPLv3) or any later version. You can find it here.
The goal of the AGPL license is to maximize user freedom and to encourage companies to contribute back to open source. You can read more about why we chose the AGPL license for our startup.
Can Plausible Analytics be self-hosted?
Yes. You can install and run Plausible on your own server. See the self-hosted web analytics docs for details.
Is Google Analytics open source?
No, Google Analytics is not open source. It is a closed source, proprietary product. There is no way of knowing what happens behind the scenes when you run Google Analytics on your site. You have to trust Google.
For a full comparison of the two, see Plausible vs Google Analytics. If you’re evaluating other open source options, see how we compare to Matomo.
Why is Plausible not free while Google Analytics is?
Plausible is independently owned and actively developed. To keep development going and cover our costs, we charge a subscription fee.
Google Analytics is free because Google built its business on collecting and analyzing personal data from web users and using those insights to sell advertising. Plausible doesn’t operate that way. No personal data is collected. You own and control all of your website data and it is never shared with or sold to third parties.
If you want to run it yourself, self-hosting is an option.
Plausible is open in other ways too
We have a public roadmap driven by community suggestions and you can reach us by email with any questions.
Your stats are also private by default, but you can choose to make them public and share a custom link that lets anyone view them. See the stats for the Plausible website itself as an example.
Try Plausible
Sign up for a 30-day free trial with no obligations and explore our open source analytics dashboard. You don’t need to remove your current analytics provider until you’ve tested Plausible and decided if it works for you.
