Web Analytics · Comparison
GoatCounter vs. Matomo
GoatCounter and Matomo 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.
GoatCounter
Open-source, privacy-friendly web analytics that tracks no personal data.
Matomo
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics platform available self-hosted or in the cloud.
Company facts
Headquarters
Dublin, Ireland GoatCounter is a one-person project by Martin Tournoij, who is located in Ireland.
Wellington, New Zealand InnoCraft Ltd (Matomo's maker) is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. Team is distributed globally.
Employees
1 GoatCounter is a one-person independent project built and maintained solely by Martin Tournoij.
52 Approximately 52 employees as of late 2025, distributed across 5 continents.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
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$26 Matomo Cloud Business plan; USD list price (EUR list is €29/mo).
Offers Free Tier
GoatCounter.com is offered free for personal websites and small-to-medium businesses. No paid plans exist; the project is donation-supported.
Matomo On-Premise is free to self-host under GPL-3.0 with no usage limits. Matomo Cloud has no perpetual free plan (21-day trial only).
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No paid plan exists, so no trial applies. The hosted service is entirely free.
21 days Matomo Cloud offers a 21-day free trial with full feature access. No credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
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50k Entry Cloud plan starts at 50,000 hits/month. Matomo meters 'hits' (pageviews + events), not pure pageviews.
Entry Plan Website Limit
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30 sites Matomo Cloud plans (including entry) support up to 30 websites. On-Premise has no website limit.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Dashboard uses WebSocket for real-time data updates.
Matomo provides a real-time visitor dashboard showing live activity, current visitor count, and pages visited.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via data-goatcounter-click HTML attribute or window.goatcounter.count() JS call.
Matomo supports custom event tracking via JavaScript API (trackEvent), data attributes, or Tag Manager.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
No goal or conversion-rate tracking; GoatCounter is a minimalist pageview/event counter.
Matomo supports goal/conversion tracking with configurable goals and conversion rate reporting.
Funnels
No multi-step funnel analysis.
Matomo includes multi-step funnel analysis with step-to-step drop-off reporting, included in Matomo Cloud.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
No ecommerce or revenue tracking; no monetary value can be attached to events.
Matomo tracks ecommerce orders and revenue with native integrations for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and more.
Heatmaps
GoatCounter does not offer heatmap or session replay features.
Matomo includes heatmaps (click maps, scroll maps) via the Heatmap & Session Recording feature, included in Matomo Cloud.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
No cookies, localStorage, or any browser-side persistent identifiers are used.
Matomo supports a fully cookieless tracking mode. When configured cookieless, no cookies are set on visitors.
Consent Banner Required
GoatCounter's docs state a GDPR consent banner is probably not required, as no PII is collected.
When configured cookieless with privacy settings, Matomo does not require a consent banner. France's CNIL confirmed Matomo is consent-exempt under proper configuration.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor provides GDPR guidance and states no consent notice is likely needed due to no PII collection.
Matomo explicitly claims GDPR compliance and is CNIL-approved. Matomo Cloud data is stored in the EU with no transfer to the US; On-Premise stores data in your country of choice.
EU Data Residency
Data hosted on Hetzner servers in Finland and Germany. Operated by Martin Tournoij from Ireland.
Matomo Cloud stores 100% of analytics data and backups in the EU. On-Premise data residency is customer-controlled (your country of choice).
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GoatCounter is open source under EUPL-1.2, available at github.com/arp242/goatcounter.
Matomo On-Premise is open source under GPL-3.0. The Cloud version is built on the same open-source core.
License
EUPL-1.2 Licensed under EUPL-1.2 with a minor modification to the Compatible Licenses appendix.
GPL-3.0 Matomo core is GPL-3.0. Premium plugins use a separate proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
Self-hosting is officially documented and encouraged for high-volume usage.
Matomo On-Premise is the flagship self-hosted edition, freely downloadable and installable on any PHP/MySQL server.
Unlimited Data Retention
Hosted data is retained until the user deletes it; no time-based aging-out.
Matomo Cloud retains aggregated report data indefinitely with no time-based aging. On-Premise users own the DB with no limit.
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.
Matomo has an official Google Analytics importer supporting both Universal Analytics and GA4 data imports.
Raw Data Export
Full pageview-level data exportable as CSV or JSON. API also supports paginated data export.
Matomo provides raw visit/action-level data export via the Reporting API and dedicated raw data endpoints. Self-hosted instances have direct DB access.
Platform & integrations
Has API
REST API (v0) for stats retrieval, data ingestion, site management, and export.
Matomo has a comprehensive Reporting HTTP API for programmatic data retrieval covering all reports and raw data.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
3 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
61.1 KB Served uncompressed by Matomo Cloud.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin maintained by GoatCounter's creator (arp242/goatcounter-wordpress on GitHub).
Matomo maintains an official WordPress plugin ('Matomo Analytics') published on wordpress.org by the Matomo team.
Email Reports
Scheduled email reports are supported. Enhancement work completed Dec 2025.
Matomo supports scheduled email reports (daily, weekly, monthly) in PDF, HTML, or CSV format.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be shared via secret access token URL (e.g. https://mystats.example.com?access-token=…).
Matomo supports public dashboard access via anonymous user feature (no login required). Token-based share links also available.
The verdict
GoatCounter Best for a free, minimal pageview counter
GoatCounter's hosted service is free with no paid plans, where Matomo Cloud starts at $26/mo. Its tracking script is 3 KB versus Matomo's 61.1 KB. The tradeoff is scope: no goals, funnels, ecommerce revenue, or heatmaps. Pick it to count pageviews and basic custom events cheaply, not to analyze conversions.
Full profile Matomo Best for conversion, ecommerce, and behavior analysis
Matomo adds goal and conversion tracking, multi-step funnels, ecommerce revenue tracking, and heatmaps that GoatCounter lacks entirely. It's backed by a 52-person team versus GoatCounter's one-person project. The cost is a $26/mo Cloud entry price and a heavier 61.1 KB script. Choose it when you need to measure outcomes, not just pageviews.
Full profileSources · 33 verified references
goatcounter.com matomo.org arp242.net leadiq.com github.com developer.matomo.org + 4 more
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