Web Analytics · Comparison
GoatCounter vs. Pirsch Analytics
GoatCounter 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.
GoatCounter
Open-source, privacy-friendly web analytics that tracks no personal data.
Pirsch Analytics
Server-side, cookieless web analytics hosted in Germany, built for GDPR compliance.
Company facts
Headquarters
Dublin, Ireland GoatCounter is a one-person project by Martin Tournoij, who is located in Ireland.
Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany Emvi Software GmbH registered at Nickelstraße 1b, 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.
Employees
1 GoatCounter is a one-person independent project built and maintained solely by Martin Tournoij.
2 Pirsch is a two-person team: Marvin Blum (backend/infra) and Daniel Schramm (design/UX).
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
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$6 Standard plan starts at $6/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews (as of June 2026).
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.
No perpetual free plan; only a 30-day free trial is offered.
Free Trial Length (Days)
0 days No paid plan exists, so no trial applies. The hosted service is entirely free.
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
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50 sites Standard entry plan covers up to 50 websites.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Dashboard uses WebSocket for real-time data updates.
Live visitor count and real-time visitor map are core dashboard features.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events tracked via data-goatcounter-click HTML attribute or window.goatcounter.count() JS call.
User-defined custom events supported via JS snippet or server-side API.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
No goal or conversion-rate tracking; GoatCounter is a minimalist pageview/event counter.
Conversion goals can be defined against events or pageviews with conversion rate reporting.
Funnels
No multi-step funnel analysis.
Multi-step funnel analysis (up to 8 steps) is available on the Plus plan.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
No ecommerce or revenue tracking; no monetary value can be attached to events.
Revenue tracked via custom events with monetary metadata; Shopify integration available.
Heatmaps
GoatCounter does not offer heatmap or session replay features.
Heatmaps are not offered; a feature request exists on the forum but is unimplemented.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
No cookies, localStorage, or any browser-side persistent identifiers are used.
Cookieless by design; uses a daily-rotating fingerprint hash with no browser cookies.
Consent Banner Required
GoatCounter's docs state a GDPR consent banner is probably not required, as no PII is collected.
Pirsch explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed for its analytics.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor provides GDPR guidance and states no consent notice is likely needed due to no PII collection.
Vendor claims GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II compliance.
EU Data Residency
Data hosted on Hetzner servers in Finland and Germany. Operated by Martin Tournoij from Ireland.
All analytics data stored on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
GoatCounter is open source under EUPL-1.2, available at github.com/arp242/goatcounter.
Core analytics library is open source (AGPLv3) on GitHub.
License
EUPL-1.2 Licensed under EUPL-1.2 with a minor modification to the Compatible Licenses appendix.
AGPLv3 Core analytics library (pirsch-analytics/pirsch) is licensed under AGPLv3.
Self-Hostable
Self-hosting is officially documented and encouraged for high-volume usage.
Self-hosting available via Enterprise License for on-premise deployment.
Unlimited Data Retention
Hosted data is retained until the user deletes it; no time-based aging-out.
Both Standard and Plus plans include unlimited data retention.
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.
Official import from Google Analytics (UA and GA4) is documented with step-by-step guide.
Raw Data Export
Full pageview-level data exportable as CSV or JSON. API also supports paginated data export.
Stats API enables full programmatic data retrieval; CSV export and raw exports on request also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
REST API (v0) for stats retrieval, data ingestion, site management, and export.
RESTful Stats API with no rate limit on statistics endpoints.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
3 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
3.5 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin maintained by GoatCounter's creator (arp242/goatcounter-wordpress on GitHub).
Official WordPress plugin published by Emvi Software GmbH on wordpress.org.
Email Reports
Scheduled email reports are supported. Enhancement work completed Dec 2025.
Scheduled weekly and monthly email summary reports are supported.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be shared via secret access token URL (e.g. https://mystats.example.com?access-token=…).
Dashboards can be made public or shared via private access links without requiring viewer accounts.
The verdict
GoatCounter Best for free, minimalist pageview counting
GoatCounter is free for personal and small-to-medium sites, donation-supported, with no paid plan; Pirsch starts at $6/month after a 30-day trial. The tradeoff is scope: GoatCounter has no goal/conversion tracking, no funnels, and no ecommerce/revenue tracking. Pick it when you want a simple, free, cookieless counter and don't need marketing analytics.
Full profile Pirsch Analytics Best for conversion, funnel and revenue analytics
Pirsch adds the marketing depth GoatCounter lacks: goal/conversion tracking, multi-step funnels (up to 8 steps), and ecommerce revenue tracking with a Shopify integration. It costs $6/month for 10k pageviews across up to 50 sites, with no free tier beyond a 30-day trial. Choose it when conversion and revenue measurement matter more than a zero-cost plan.
Full profileSources · 34 verified references
goatcounter.com pirsch.io arp242.net github.com docs.pirsch.io gc.zgo.at + 2 more
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