Cloudflare Web Analytics vs. GoatCounter

Last verified 33 days ago · 30 sources · Updated automatically

Cloudflare Web Analytics 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.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Free, privacy-first web analytics that tracks page views without cookies or fingerprinting.

Founded2009

HQ San Francisco, CA

Visit Cloudflare Web Analytics Full profile

GoatCounter

Open-source, privacy-friendly web analytics that tracks no personal data.

Founded2019

HQ Dublin, Ireland

Visit GoatCounter Full profile

Attribute

Cloudflare Web Analytics

GoatCounter

Company facts

Headquarters

San Francisco, CA

Dublin, Ireland GoatCounter is a one-person project by Martin Tournoij, who is located in Ireland.

Employees

5.2k

1 GoatCounter is a one-person independent project built and maintained solely by Martin Tournoij.

Pricing

Offers Free Tier

Cloudflare Web Analytics is entirely free — there are no paid tiers for this product.

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)

0 days

0 days No paid plan exists, so no trial applies. The hosted service is entirely free.

Entry Plan Website Limit

10 sites Soft limit of 10 sites per account (free product; raisable via Cloudflare support).

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Analytics capabilities

Real-Time Dashboard

No live/current-visitors view; real-time dashboard updates are for paid zone analytics, not the free Web Analytics product.

Dashboard uses WebSocket for real-time data updates.

Custom Event Tracking

Web Analytics tracks only pageviews/visits; custom event tracking requires the separate Zaraz product.

Custom events tracked via data-goatcounter-click HTML attribute or window.goatcounter.count() JS call.

Goal / Conversion Tracking

No goal or conversion rate reporting in Cloudflare Web Analytics.

No goal or conversion-rate tracking; GoatCounter is a minimalist pageview/event counter.

Funnels

No multi-step funnel analysis.

Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking

Revenue tracking is a Zaraz product feature, not part of Cloudflare Web Analytics.

No ecommerce or revenue tracking; no monetary value can be attached to events.

Heatmaps

GoatCounter does not offer heatmap or session replay features.

Privacy & compliance

Cookieless Tracking

Cookieless by default — does not use cookies or localStorage to collect usage metrics.

No cookies, localStorage, or any browser-side persistent identifiers are used.

Consent Banner Required

No cookie banner needed for Web Analytics alone; the tool sets no cookies and collects no personal identifiers.

GoatCounter's docs state a GDPR consent banner is probably not required, as no PII is collected.

GDPR Compliant

Cloudflare maintains a GDPR trust page and uses EU Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfers.

Vendor provides GDPR guidance and states no consent notice is likely needed due to no PII collection.

EU Data Residency

Free Web Analytics product does not offer EU data residency; Data Localization Suite is a separate enterprise add-on.

Data hosted on Hetzner servers in Finland and Germany. Operated by Martin Tournoij from Ireland.

Data ownership & deployment

Open Source

Proprietary cloud product. Counterscale is a separate MIT-licensed community project, not Cloudflare Web Analytics.

GoatCounter is open source under EUPL-1.2, available at github.com/arp242/goatcounter.

License

proprietary

EUPL-1.2 Licensed under EUPL-1.2 with a minor modification to the Compatible Licenses appendix.

Self-Hostable

Self-hosting is officially documented and encouraged for high-volume usage.

Data Retention (Months)

6 mo Free plan retains approximately 6 months of analytics history.

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Unlimited Data Retention

Hosted data is retained until the user deletes it; no time-based aging-out.

Google Analytics Import

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

Web Analytics (RUM) data is queryable and pageable via the GraphQL Analytics API; no in-dashboard CSV button.

Full pageview-level data exportable as CSV or JSON. API also supports paginated data export.

Platform & integrations

Has API

GraphQL Analytics API provides programmatic access to Web Analytics data.

REST API (v0) for stats retrieval, data ingestion, site management, and export.

Tracking Script Size (KB)

11.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

3 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

Official WordPress Plugin

No official Cloudflare-published WordPress plugin specifically for Web Analytics; community plugins exist.

Official WordPress plugin maintained by GoatCounter's creator (arp242/goatcounter-wordpress on GitHub).

Email Reports

Weekly email digest reports available via Cloudflare's Notifications system.

Scheduled email reports are supported. Enhancement work completed Dec 2025.

Public Dashboard Sharing

No public or shareable-link dashboard; sharing requires granting Cloudflare account access.

Dashboards can be shared via secret access token URL (e.g. https://mystats.example.com?access-token=…).

The verdict

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Best for backing by a large, established vendor

Both tools are free and cookieless, but Cloudflare is run by a 5,156-person company versus GoatCounter's single maintainer — relevant if vendor scale and continuity matter. It also covers up to 10 sites per account. The trade-off: feature-thin (no real-time view, custom events, or self-hosting) and capped at ~6 months of retention.

Full profile

GoatCounter

Best for data ownership and capability per kilobyte

GoatCounter is the broader pick: open source (EUPL-1.2) and self-hostable, with a real-time dashboard, custom events, GA import, CSV/JSON export, EU data residency, unlimited retention, and a 3 KB script versus Cloudflare's 11.2 KB. It also shares dashboards publicly. The caveat: it is a one-person project (1 employee).

Full profile

Sources · 30 verified references

sec.gov goatcounter.com arp242.net cloudflare.com developers.cloudflare.com github.com + 5 more

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