Cloudflare Web Analytics vs. Pirsch Analytics

Last verified 33 days ago · 38 sources · Updated automatically

Cloudflare Web Analytics and Pirsch Analytics 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

Pirsch Analytics

Server-side, cookieless web analytics hosted in Germany, built for GDPR compliance.

Founded2019

HQ Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany

Visit Pirsch Analytics Full profile

Attribute

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Pirsch Analytics

Company facts

Headquarters

San Francisco, CA

Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany Emvi Software GmbH registered at Nickelstraße 1b, 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.

Employees

5.2k

2 Pirsch is a two-person team: Marvin Blum (backend/infra) and Daniel Schramm (design/UX).

Pricing

Starting Monthly Price (USD)

—

$6 Standard plan starts at $6/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews (as of June 2026).

Offers Free Tier

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

No perpetual free plan; only a 30-day free trial is offered.

Free Trial Length (Days)

0 days

30 days 30-day free trial with no credit card required.

Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)

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10k Standard entry plan includes 10,000 monthly pageviews at $6/month.

Entry Plan Website Limit

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

50 sites Standard entry plan covers up to 50 websites.

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.

Live visitor count and real-time visitor map are core dashboard features.

Custom Event Tracking

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

User-defined custom events supported via JS snippet or server-side API.

Goal / Conversion Tracking

No goal or conversion rate reporting in Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Conversion goals can be defined against events or pageviews with conversion rate reporting.

Funnels

Multi-step funnel analysis (up to 8 steps) is available on the Plus plan.

Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking

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

Revenue tracked via custom events with monetary metadata; Shopify integration available.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps are not offered; a feature request exists on the forum but is unimplemented.

Privacy & compliance

Cookieless Tracking

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

Cookieless by design; uses a daily-rotating fingerprint hash with no browser cookies.

Consent Banner Required

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

Pirsch explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed for its analytics.

GDPR Compliant

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

Vendor claims GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II compliance.

EU Data Residency

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

All analytics data stored on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany.

Data ownership & deployment

Open Source

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

Core analytics library is open source (AGPLv3) on GitHub.

License

proprietary

AGPLv3 Core analytics library (pirsch-analytics/pirsch) is licensed under AGPLv3.

Self-Hostable

Self-hosting available via Enterprise License for on-premise deployment.

Data Retention (Months)

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

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Unlimited Data Retention

Both Standard and Plus plans include unlimited data retention.

Google Analytics Import

Official import from Google Analytics (UA and GA4) is documented with step-by-step guide.

Raw Data Export

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

Stats API enables full programmatic data retrieval; CSV export and raw exports on request also available.

Platform & integrations

Has API

GraphQL Analytics API provides programmatic access to Web Analytics data.

RESTful Stats API with no rate limit on statistics endpoints.

Tracking Script Size (KB)

11.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

3.5 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

Official WordPress Plugin

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

Official WordPress plugin published by Emvi Software GmbH on wordpress.org.

Email Reports

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

Scheduled weekly and monthly email summary reports are supported.

Public Dashboard Sharing

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

Dashboards can be made public or shared via private access links without requiring viewer accounts.

The verdict

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Best for free, zero-cost basic traffic stats

The product is entirely free with no paid tiers, where Pirsch has no free plan and starts at $6/month after a 30-day trial. The tradeoff is scope: Cloudflare omits the real-time dashboard, custom events, goals, funnels, and revenue tracking that Pirsch offers, and retains roughly 6 months of history versus Pirsch's unlimited retention.

Full profile

Pirsch Analytics

Best for EU residency and conversion tracking

Pirsch stores data in Germany with EU residency and is open source (AGPLv3) and self-hostable, none of which Cloudflare offers. It adds a real-time dashboard, custom events, goal and funnel tracking, revenue tracking, GA import, an official WordPress plugin, and public dashboard sharing. Its script is 3.5 KB versus 11.2 KB. The cost is $6/month with no free tier.

Full profile

Sources · 38 verified references

sec.gov pirsch.io cloudflare.com developers.cloudflare.com docs.pirsch.io plausible.io + 5 more

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