Web Analytics · Comparison
Matomo vs. Plausible Analytics
Matomo 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.
Matomo
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics platform available self-hosted or in the cloud.
Plausible Analytics
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics — a lightweight, cookieless Google Analytics alternative.
Company facts
Headquarters
Wellington, New Zealand InnoCraft Ltd (Matomo's maker) is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. Team is distributed globally.
EU (remote-first)
Employees
52 Approximately 52 employees as of late 2025, distributed across 5 continents.
10
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$26 Matomo Cloud Business plan; USD list price (EUR list is €29/mo).
$9 Starter plan at $9/mo (monthly billing); 10k pageviews, 1 site
Offers Free Tier
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).
Plausible Community Edition (CE) is a free self-hostable open-source version
Free Trial Length (Days)
21 days Matomo Cloud offers a 21-day free trial with full feature access. No credit card required.
30 days 30-day free trial on all paid plans, no credit card required
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
50k Entry Cloud plan starts at 50,000 hits/month. Matomo meters 'hits' (pageviews + events), not pure pageviews.
10k Starter plan includes up to 10k monthly pageviews
Entry Plan Website Limit
30 sites Matomo Cloud plans (including entry) support up to 30 websites. On-Premise has no website limit.
1 sites Starter plan covers 1 site; Growth allows up to 3, Business up to 10
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Matomo provides a real-time visitor dashboard showing live activity, current visitor count, and pages visited.
Real-time dashboard updates every 30 seconds
Custom Event Tracking
Matomo supports custom event tracking via JavaScript API (trackEvent), data attributes, or Tag Manager.
Custom event tracking available via JS snippet, CSS class, or Events API
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Matomo supports goal/conversion tracking with configurable goals and conversion rate reporting.
Supports pageview goals and custom event goals with conversion rate reporting
Funnels
Matomo includes multi-step funnel analysis with step-to-step drop-off reporting, included in Matomo Cloud.
Funnel analysis is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Matomo tracks ecommerce orders and revenue with native integrations for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and more.
Revenue tracking (monetary values on events) is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)
Heatmaps
Matomo includes heatmaps (click maps, scroll maps) via the Heatmap & Session Recording feature, included in Matomo Cloud.
No
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Matomo supports a fully cookieless tracking mode. When configured cookieless, no cookies are set on visitors.
No cookies or persistent identifiers used by default; daily-rotating anonymous hash only
Consent Banner Required
When configured cookieless with privacy settings, Matomo does not require a consent banner. France's CNIL confirmed Matomo is consent-exempt under proper configuration.
No cookie banner needed — Plausible collects no personal data and sets no cookies
GDPR Compliant
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.
Yes
EU Data Residency
Matomo Cloud stores 100% of analytics data and backups in the EU. On-Premise data residency is customer-controlled (your country of choice).
Data stored in Falkenstein, Germany on Hetzner servers; CDN via Bunny (Slovenia)
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Matomo On-Premise is open source under GPL-3.0. The Cloud version is built on the same open-source core.
Community Edition (CE) is AGPLv3; cloud product is built on same open-source codebase
License
GPL-3.0 Matomo core is GPL-3.0. Premium plugins use a separate proprietary license.
AGPLv3
Self-Hostable
Matomo On-Premise is the flagship self-hosted edition, freely downloadable and installable on any PHP/MySQL server.
Plausible Community Edition (CE) is officially supported for self-hosting
Data Retention (Months)
—
36 mo Starter and Growth plans retain 3 years (36 months) of data; Business/Enterprise retain 5+ years
Unlimited Data Retention
Matomo Cloud retains aggregated report data indefinitely with no time-based aging. On-Premise users own the DB with no limit.
Starter/Growth: 3-year retention; Business: 5-year retention
Google Analytics Import
Matomo has an official Google Analytics importer supporting both Universal Analytics and GA4 data imports.
Official GA4 import supported (up to 5 GA4 properties); Universal Analytics (UA) not supported
Raw 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.
CSV/ZIP exports available on all plans; Stats API on Business plan; raw event-level export requires Enterprise
Platform & integrations
Has API
Matomo has a comprehensive Reporting HTTP API for programmatic data retrieval covering all reports and raw data.
Stats API is a Business plan feature; Events API (for sending data) available on all plans
Tracking Script Size (KB)
61.1 KB Served uncompressed by Matomo Cloud.
1.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Matomo maintains an official WordPress plugin ('Matomo Analytics') published on wordpress.org by the Matomo team.
Official WordPress plugin maintained by Plausible
Email Reports
Matomo supports scheduled email reports (daily, weekly, monthly) in PDF, HTML, or CSV format.
Weekly (every Monday) and/or monthly (1st of month) email reports; analytics embedded in email
Public Dashboard Sharing
Matomo supports public dashboard access via anonymous user feature (no login required). Token-based share links also available.
Shared links (optionally password-protected) and fully public dashboards supported
The verdict
Matomo Best for deep analytics and full data control
Matomo bundles funnels, heatmaps, and ecommerce revenue tracking in-plan, where Plausible gates funnels and revenue behind its Business tier and has no heatmaps. Its entry plan covers 30 sites vs Plausible's 1, offers unlimited retention vs a 36-month cap, and includes raw data export and the API that Plausible reserves for higher tiers. The trade-off is price: $26/mo vs $9.
Full profile Plausible Analytics Best for a cheap, lightweight single-site setup
Plausible starts at $9/mo against Matomo's $26 and ships a 1.2 KB script versus Matomo's 61.1 KB, with a longer 30-day trial. Both are cookieless, consent-banner-free, EU-hosted, and self-hostable. The catch is scope: 1 site at entry vs 30, 36-month retention vs unlimited, no heatmaps, and funnels, revenue tracking, and the Stats API only on its Business plan.
Full profileSources · 40 verified references
matomo.org plausible.io leadiq.com developer.matomo.org plugins.matomo.org github.com + 2 more
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