Web Analytics · Comparison
Clicky vs. GoatCounter
Clicky and GoatCounter compared across Company facts, Pricing, Analytics capabilities, Privacy & compliance, Data ownership & deployment and Platform & integrations — every fact sourced and re-verified from each vendor's public material.
Clicky
Real-time, privacy-friendly web analytics with per-visitor tracking and heatmaps.
GoatCounter
Open-source, privacy-friendly web analytics that tracks no personal data.
Company facts
Headquarters
Portland, OR Clicky is a product of Roxr Software, Ltd, headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
Dublin, Ireland GoatCounter is a one-person project by Martin Tournoij, who is located in Ireland.
Employees
7 Roxr Software is a very small team; third-party sources estimate approximately 7 employees.
1 GoatCounter is a one-person independent project built and maintained solely by Martin Tournoij.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$9.99 Pro plan at $9.99/month is the entry paid tier.
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Offers Free Tier
Perpetual free plan: 1 site, 3,000 daily pageviews (~90,000/month). Not a trial — it persists after the 21-day premium trial ends.
GoatCounter.com is offered free for personal websites and small-to-medium businesses. No paid plans exist; the project is donation-supported.
Free Trial Length (Days)
21 days All new accounts get a 21-day free trial of the premium service with full features.
0 days No paid plan exists, so no trial applies. The hosted service is entirely free.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
900k Pro plan allows 30,000 daily pageviews; Clicky's own docs convert this to ~900,000/month (30,000 × 30) as the soft monthly limit.
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Entry Plan Website Limit
10 sites Pro entry plan covers up to 10 websites.
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Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Clicky is built around real-time visitor logs — it shows every visitor and page view as they happen.
Dashboard uses WebSocket for real-time data updates.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events supported via clicky_custom JS object and manual logging API. Both predefined and dynamic goals available.
Custom events tracked via data-goatcounter-click HTML attribute or window.goatcounter.count() JS call.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Goals with conversion tracking available on Pro and above via predefined or dynamic goal system.
No goal or conversion-rate tracking; GoatCounter is a minimalist pageview/event counter.
Funnels
Funnel analysis supported for predefined goals on Pro plan and above.
No multi-step funnel analysis.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracking via goals: attach monetary values to predefined goal events and report revenue by source.
No ecommerce or revenue tracking; no monetary value can be attached to events.
Heatmaps
Click heatmaps included, filterable by visitor segment. Requires Pro Plus ($14.99/mo) or higher — not on entry Pro plan.
GoatCounter does not offer heatmap or session replay features.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Cookieless tracking is the default mode since a March 2022 privacy update — tracking is 100% cookie-free by default; no cookies are set unless the site operator explicitly enables them.
No cookies, localStorage, or any browser-side persistent identifiers are used.
Consent Banner Required
No cookie consent banner required when using default cookieless mode. Clicky is 'privacy-friendly out of the box.'
GoatCounter's docs state a GDPR consent banner is probably not required, as no PII is collected.
GDPR Compliant
Clicky explicitly states GDPR compliance with anonymized-by-default tracking.
Vendor provides GDPR guidance and states no consent notice is likely needed due to no PII collection.
EU Data Residency
Clicky data is stored in the United States (Roxr, Portland OR). EU visitors' data is routed to a London VPS for performance but ultimately stored on US infrastructure.
Data hosted on Hetzner servers in Finland and Germany. Operated by Martin Tournoij from Ireland.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Clicky is a proprietary closed-source SaaS product.
GoatCounter is open source under EUPL-1.2, available at github.com/arp242/goatcounter.
License
proprietary Clicky is a closed-source proprietary SaaS product with no open-source edition.
EUPL-1.2 Licensed under EUPL-1.2 with a minor modification to the Compatible Licenses appendix.
Self-Hostable
Clicky is a cloud-only SaaS with no self-hosting or on-premise deployment option.
Self-hosting is officially documented and encouraged for high-volume usage.
Data Retention (Months)
48 mo Premium plans retain daily granularity data for 4 years (48 months); older data shifts to monthly-only view.
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Unlimited Data Retention
Data retention is finite: 4-year (48-month) daily granularity for paid plans; no 'forever' retention claim.
Hosted data is retained until the user deletes it; no time-based aging-out.
Google Analytics Import
No official Google Analytics import. Clicky begins collecting from install date; no documented migration/import path exists.
Google Analytics report import added in v2.6.0 (Jun 2025). Limited to path-level totals due to GA's export constraints.
Raw Data Export
Stats API supports full data export in JSON, XML, CSV, and PHP formats. Available on paid plans.
Full pageview-level data exportable as CSV or JSON. API also supports paginated data export.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Documented Stats API available for programmatic data retrieval. Free accounts have limited access; Pro accounts unlock full 366-day range.
REST API (v0) for stats retrieval, data ingestion, site management, and export.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
5.1 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
3 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
The 'Clicky Analytics' WordPress.org plugin is published by third-party developer Alin Marcu (deconf), not by Clicky/Roxr.
Official WordPress plugin maintained by GoatCounter's creator (arp242/goatcounter-wordpress on GitHub).
Email Reports
Scheduled daily, weekly, or monthly email reports available in PDF, HTML, or plaintext formats. Pro plan and above.
Scheduled email reports are supported. Enhancement work completed Dec 2025.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Viewing Clicky stats requires authentication. Sharing is done via sub-user accounts or a 'private link' — no unauthenticated public dashboard found.
Dashboards can be shared via secret access token URL (e.g. https://mystats.example.com?access-token=…).
The verdict
Clicky Best for goal, funnel, and revenue tracking
Clicky covers conversion work GoatCounter lacks: goal/conversion tracking, multi-step funnels, ecommerce revenue tracking, and click heatmaps. Its paid Pro tier ($9.99/mo) allows up to 10 sites and a ~900k monthly pageview limit. The trade-off: proprietary, cloud-only, US data storage, and 48-month retention.
Full profile GoatCounter Best for free, open-source, EU-hosted tracking
GoatCounter is open source (EUPL-1.2), self-hostable, and free on its hosted plan with EU data residency (Finland/Germany) and unlimited retention. It adds GA import, an official WordPress plugin, public dashboard sharing, and a 3 KB script. Clicky offers none of these. The gap: no goals, funnels, ecommerce, or heatmaps.
Full profileSources · 31 verified references
clicky.com goatcounter.com zoominfo.com arp242.net github.com static.getclicky.com + 2 more
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