Web Analytics · Comparison
Cloudflare Web Analytics vs. Statcounter
Cloudflare Web Analytics and Statcounter 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.
Statcounter
Simple real-time web analytics tracking visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and page performance.
Company facts
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
Dublin, Ireland Headquartered at Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor's Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Employees
5.2k
8 Very small team; multiple sources indicate 7–10 employees as of 2024–2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
—
$9 Premium plan starts at $9/month for 20,000 sessions/month.
Offers Free Tier
Cloudflare Web Analytics is entirely free — there are no paid tiers for this product.
Basic plan is free forever with 5,000 sessions/month and 14 days data retention.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days
30 days 30-day free trial on paid plans, no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
—
20k Entry Premium plan includes 20,000 sessions/month. Statcounter uses 'sessions' not pageviews.
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.
Live visitor feed and real-time visitor updates available on all plans including free Basic.
Custom Event Tracking
Web Analytics tracks only pageviews/visits; custom event tracking requires the separate Zaraz product.
Statcounter does not support user-defined custom events. Goal tracking is URL/page-based only.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
No goal or conversion rate reporting in Cloudflare Web Analytics.
Supports URL-based conversion goal tracking; shows conversion rate from landing page to goal URL.
Funnels
No
No multi-step funnel analysis feature found in Statcounter's product.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracking is a Zaraz product feature, not part of Cloudflare Web Analytics.
No ecommerce or revenue tracking feature found; no monetary value attribution in any report.
Heatmaps
No
Interactive click heatmaps available on Premium Plus plan ($19/mo and above).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Cookieless by default — does not use cookies or localStorage to collect usage metrics.
Statcounter sets a persistent analytics cookie ('is_unique') by default. No cookieless tracking mode available.
Consent Banner Required
No cookie banner needed for Web Analytics alone; the tool sets no cookies and collects no personal identifiers.
Statcounter sets persistent analytics cookies; a consent banner is required for EU/ePrivacy compliance.
GDPR Compliant
Cloudflare maintains a GDPR trust page and uses EU Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfers.
Statcounter claims GDPR compatibility, arguing it is anonymous tracking and IP addresses are not personal data under its use.
EU Data Residency
Free Web Analytics product does not offer EU data residency; Data Localization Suite is a separate enterprise add-on.
No first-party EU data-storage guarantee; company is Dublin-based but visitor data location is undocumented and infrastructure signals point to US providers (Cloudflare/Rackspace).
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Proprietary cloud product. Counterscale is a separate MIT-licensed community project, not Cloudflare Web Analytics.
Statcounter is a proprietary closed-source SaaS product.
License
proprietary
proprietary Closed-source SaaS with a proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
No
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting or on-premises option available.
Data Retention (Months)
6 mo Free plan retains approximately 6 months of analytics history.
36 mo Entry Premium plan retains data for 3 years (36 months).
Unlimited Data Retention
No
Entry Premium plan has a 3-year (36-month) data retention limit; Premium Plus is 5 years.
Google Analytics Import
No
No Google Analytics historical data import tool found.
Raw Data Export
Web Analytics (RUM) data is queryable and pageable via the GraphQL Analytics API; no in-dashboard CSV button.
Only aggregated summary reports are exportable as CSV/Excel; raw visit-level data export is not available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
GraphQL Analytics API provides programmatic access to Web Analytics data.
Statcounter API at api.statcounter.com allows programmatic access to analytics data; requires paid plan.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
11.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
17.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
No official Cloudflare-published WordPress plugin specifically for Web Analytics; community plugins exist.
Official Statcounter plugin published on wordpress.org under the vendor's name.
Email Reports
Weekly email digest reports available via Cloudflare's Notifications system.
Scheduled email reports available daily, weekly, or monthly with customizable stat selection.
Public Dashboard Sharing
No public or shareable-link dashboard; sharing requires granting Cloudflare account access.
Stats can be made publicly viewable via a 'Public Stats' option; no login required to view.
The verdict
Cloudflare Web Analytics Best for cookieless, banner-free privacy at zero cost
Entirely free with no paid tiers, and cookieless by default, so it needs no consent banner — unlike Statcounter, which sets a persistent cookie and requires one, and charges $9/mo to move past its free plan. Raw visit data is queryable via a GraphQL API. The trade-off: no real-time view, no goal tracking, and only 6 months of retention.
Full profile Statcounter Best for live visitors, goal tracking, and WordPress
Adds a real-time live-visitor feed and URL-based goal/conversion tracking — both absent from Cloudflare — plus heatmaps on higher tiers, an official WordPress plugin, public dashboard sharing, and 36 months of retention versus Cloudflare's 6. The cost: it sets a persistent cookie (so a consent banner is needed) and the entry paid plan is $9/mo.
Full profileSources · 35 verified references
sec.gov statcounter.com tracxn.com cloudflare.com developers.cloudflare.com plausible.io + 4 more
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