Web Analytics · Comparison
Matomo vs. Statcounter
Matomo 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.
Matomo
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics platform available self-hosted or in the cloud.
Statcounter
Simple real-time web analytics tracking visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and page performance.
Company facts
Headquarters
Wellington, New Zealand InnoCraft Ltd (Matomo's maker) is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. Team is distributed globally.
Dublin, Ireland Headquartered at Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor's Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Employees
52 Approximately 52 employees as of late 2025, distributed across 5 continents.
8 Very small team; multiple sources indicate 7–10 employees as of 2024–2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$26 Matomo Cloud Business plan; USD list price (EUR list is €29/mo).
$9 Premium plan starts at $9/month for 20,000 sessions/month.
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).
Basic plan is free forever with 5,000 sessions/month and 14 days data retention.
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 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.
20k Entry Premium plan includes 20,000 sessions/month. Statcounter uses 'sessions' not pageviews.
Entry Plan Website Limit
30 sites Matomo Cloud plans (including entry) support up to 30 websites. On-Premise has no website limit.
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Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Matomo provides a real-time visitor dashboard showing live activity, current visitor count, and pages visited.
Live visitor feed and real-time visitor updates available on all plans including free Basic.
Custom Event Tracking
Matomo supports custom event tracking via JavaScript API (trackEvent), data attributes, or Tag Manager.
Statcounter does not support user-defined custom events. Goal tracking is URL/page-based only.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Matomo supports goal/conversion tracking with configurable goals and conversion rate reporting.
Supports URL-based conversion goal tracking; shows conversion rate from landing page to goal URL.
Funnels
Matomo includes multi-step funnel analysis with step-to-step drop-off reporting, included in Matomo Cloud.
No multi-step funnel analysis feature found in Statcounter's product.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Matomo tracks ecommerce orders and revenue with native integrations for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and more.
No ecommerce or revenue tracking feature found; no monetary value attribution in any report.
Heatmaps
Matomo includes heatmaps (click maps, scroll maps) via the Heatmap & Session Recording feature, included in Matomo Cloud.
Interactive click heatmaps available on Premium Plus plan ($19/mo and above).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Matomo supports a fully cookieless tracking mode. When configured cookieless, no cookies are set on visitors.
Statcounter sets a persistent analytics cookie ('is_unique') by default. No cookieless tracking mode available.
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.
Statcounter sets persistent analytics cookies; a consent banner is required for EU/ePrivacy compliance.
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.
Statcounter claims GDPR compatibility, arguing it is anonymous tracking and IP addresses are not personal data under its use.
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).
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
Matomo On-Premise is open source under GPL-3.0. The Cloud version is built on the same open-source core.
Statcounter is a proprietary closed-source SaaS product.
License
GPL-3.0 Matomo core is GPL-3.0. Premium plugins use a separate proprietary license.
proprietary Closed-source SaaS with a proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
Matomo On-Premise is the flagship self-hosted edition, freely downloadable and installable on any PHP/MySQL server.
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting or on-premises option available.
Data Retention (Months)
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36 mo Entry Premium plan retains data for 3 years (36 months).
Unlimited Data Retention
Matomo Cloud retains aggregated report data indefinitely with no time-based aging. On-Premise users own the DB with no limit.
Entry Premium plan has a 3-year (36-month) data retention limit; Premium Plus is 5 years.
Google Analytics Import
Matomo has an official Google Analytics importer supporting both Universal Analytics and GA4 data imports.
No Google Analytics historical data import tool found.
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.
Only aggregated summary reports are exportable as CSV/Excel; raw visit-level data export is not available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Matomo has a comprehensive Reporting HTTP API for programmatic data retrieval covering all reports and raw data.
Statcounter API at api.statcounter.com allows programmatic access to analytics data; requires paid plan.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
61.1 KB Served uncompressed by Matomo Cloud.
17.2 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 Statcounter plugin published on wordpress.org under the vendor's name.
Email Reports
Matomo supports scheduled email reports (daily, weekly, monthly) in PDF, HTML, or CSV format.
Scheduled email reports available daily, weekly, or monthly with customizable stat selection.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Matomo supports public dashboard access via anonymous user feature (no login required). Token-based share links also available.
Stats can be made publicly viewable via a 'Public Stats' option; no login required to view.
The verdict
Matomo Best for privacy compliance and data ownership
The only option here you can self-host (GPL-3.0 open source), with EU data residency, cookieless tracking, and no consent banner required — Statcounter is closed-source SaaS that sets persistent cookies, needs a banner, and offers no EU storage guarantee. Matomo also adds custom events, funnels, ecommerce tracking, GA import, and raw-data export.
Full profile Statcounter Best for low-cost, lightweight basic tracking
Cheaper entry at $9/mo versus Matomo's $26, with a free-forever Basic plan (5k sessions) and a tracking script roughly a third the size at 17.2 KB versus 61.1 KB. Fits sites wanting simple visitor stats on a tight budget, provided you don't need custom events, funnels, ecommerce tracking, or raw-data export — none of which Statcounter offers.
Full profileSources · 38 verified references
matomo.org statcounter.com leadiq.com tracxn.com developer.matomo.org plugins.matomo.org + 4 more
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