Cloudflare Web Analytics vs. Plausible Analytics

Last verified 33 days ago · 37 sources · Updated automatically

Cloudflare Web Analytics and Plausible 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

Plausible Analytics

Open-source, privacy-first web analytics — a lightweight, cookieless Google Analytics alternative.

Founded2018

HQ EU (remote-first)

Visit Plausible Analytics Full profile

Attribute

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Plausible Analytics

Company facts

Headquarters

San Francisco, CA

EU (remote-first)

Employees

5.2k

Pricing

Starting Monthly Price (USD)

—

$9 Starter plan at $9/mo (monthly billing); 10k pageviews, 1 site

Offers Free Tier

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

Plausible Community Edition (CE) is a free self-hostable open-source version

Free Trial Length (Days)

0 days

30 days 30-day free trial on all paid plans, no credit card required

Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)

—

10k Starter plan includes up to 10k monthly pageviews

Entry Plan Website Limit

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

1 sites Starter plan covers 1 site; Growth allows up to 3, Business up to 10

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.

Real-time dashboard updates every 30 seconds

Custom Event Tracking

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

Custom event tracking available via JS snippet, CSS class, or Events API

Goal / Conversion Tracking

No goal or conversion rate reporting in Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Supports pageview goals and custom event goals with conversion rate reporting

Funnels

Funnel analysis is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)

Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking

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

Revenue tracking (monetary values on events) is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)

Heatmaps

Privacy & compliance

Cookieless Tracking

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

No cookies or persistent identifiers used by default; daily-rotating anonymous hash only

Consent Banner Required

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

No cookie banner needed — Plausible collects no personal data and sets no cookies

GDPR Compliant

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

Yes

EU Data Residency

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

Data stored in Falkenstein, Germany on Hetzner servers; CDN via Bunny (Slovenia)

Data ownership & deployment

Open Source

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

Community Edition (CE) is AGPLv3; cloud product is built on same open-source codebase

License

proprietary

AGPLv3

Self-Hostable

Plausible Community Edition (CE) is officially supported for self-hosting

Data Retention (Months)

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

36 mo Starter and Growth plans retain 3 years (36 months) of data; Business/Enterprise retain 5+ years

Unlimited Data Retention

Starter/Growth: 3-year retention; Business: 5-year retention

Google Analytics Import

Official GA4 import supported (up to 5 GA4 properties); Universal Analytics (UA) not supported

Raw Data Export

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

CSV/ZIP exports available on all plans; Stats API on Business plan; raw event-level export requires Enterprise

Platform & integrations

Has API

GraphQL Analytics API provides programmatic access to Web Analytics data.

Stats API is a Business plan feature; Events API (for sending data) available on all plans

Tracking Script Size (KB)

11.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.

1.2 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 Plausible

Email Reports

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

Weekly (every Monday) and/or monthly (1st of month) email reports; analytics embedded in email

Public Dashboard Sharing

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

Shared links (optionally password-protected) and fully public dashboards supported

The verdict

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Best for free pageview counts across many sites

Entirely free with no paid tiers, and covers 10 sites versus Plausible's 1-site starter. The trade-off is scope: no real-time view, custom events, goals, funnels, or revenue tracking, and just 6 months of retention. Pick it when you only need free pageview/visit counts at a wider site count.

Full profile

Plausible Analytics

Best for goals, events, and data ownership

Adds the conversion layer Cloudflare lacks: real-time dashboard, custom events, goal tracking, funnels, and revenue tracking. It is also AGPLv3 and self-hostable with EU data residency, GA4 import, public dashboard sharing, 36-month retention, and a 1.2 KB script vs 11.2 KB. Costs from $9/mo and caps the entry plan at 1 site / 10k pageviews.

Full profile

Sources · 37 verified references

sec.gov plausible.io cloudflare.com developers.cloudflare.com community.cloudflare.com github.com + 2 more

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