Web Analytics · Comparison
Pirsch Analytics vs. Piwik PRO
Pirsch Analytics and Piwik PRO 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.
Pirsch Analytics
Server-side, cookieless web analytics hosted in Germany, built for GDPR compliance.
Piwik PRO
Enterprise-grade, privacy-focused analytics and customer data platform with GDPR compliance.
Company facts
Headquarters
Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany Emvi Software GmbH registered at Nickelstraße 1b, 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.
Wrocław, Poland
Employees
2 Pirsch is a two-person team: Marvin Blum (backend/infra) and Daniel Schramm (design/UX).
190 Vendor about page states 'nearly 200 people'; third-party sources (LinkedIn, Pitchbook) show ~159–160 as of late 2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$6 Standard plan starts at $6/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews (as of June 2026).
$40.38 Entry Business plan starts at €35/month; converted at 1.1537 EUR/USD (rate on 2026-06-10). No USD list price published.
Offers Free Tier
No perpetual free plan; only a 30-day free trial is offered.
Free Core plan was discontinued March 2026; only a 30-day trial is available.
Free Trial Length (Days)
30 days 30-day free trial with no credit card required.
30 days
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
10k Standard entry plan includes 10,000 monthly pageviews at $6/month.
2M Piwik PRO meters 'actions' (not pageviews); 2M actions/month on the entry Business plan.
Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Standard entry plan covers up to 50 websites.
20 sites Business plan includes up to 20 domains at the base tier; price adjusts based on domain count.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Live visitor count and real-time visitor map are core dashboard features.
Yes
Custom Event Tracking
User-defined custom events supported via JS snippet or server-side API.
Yes
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Conversion goals can be defined against events or pageviews with conversion rate reporting.
Yes
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis (up to 8 steps) is available on the Plus plan.
Yes
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracked via custom events with monetary metadata; Shopify integration available.
Yes
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not offered; a feature request exists on the forum but is unimplemented.
Heatmaps (click, scroll maps) are part of the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite via built-in Tag Manager; visualized through the official Site Inspector Chrome extension.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Cookieless by design; uses a daily-rotating fingerprint hash with no browser cookies.
Cookieless tracking is a fully supported optional mode; can be enabled per site via Administration settings.
Consent Banner Required
Pirsch explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed for its analytics.
Default configuration uses cookies and requires consent. With cookieless/anonymous mode enabled, no consent banner is needed — but that requires explicit configuration.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor claims GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II compliance.
Yes
EU Data Residency
All analytics data stored on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany.
EU data residency is available; Business plan is hosted on EU servers in Sweden (Elastx). Enterprise offers 60+ Azure regions including EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Core analytics library is open source (AGPLv3) on GitHub.
No
License
AGPLv3 Core analytics library (pirsch-analytics/pirsch) is licensed under AGPLv3.
proprietary
Self-Hostable
Self-hosting available via Enterprise License for on-premise deployment.
Traditional on-premise/self-hosted deployment is no longer offered. 'Private cloud' (installation in customer's own Azure subscription) is available on Enterprise plans.
Data Retention (Months)
—
25 mo
Unlimited Data Retention
Both Standard and Plus plans include unlimited data retention.
No
Google Analytics Import
Official import from Google Analytics (UA and GA4) is documented with step-by-step guide.
Historical GA data cannot be imported. A settings/configuration migration tool (GA3 + GTM) existed but was discontinued April 2025; no data import path exists.
Raw Data Export
Stats API enables full programmatic data retrieval; CSV export and raw exports on request also available.
Raw session and event data available via Reporting API at no extra cost; daily CSV raw data export is a paid add-on.
Platform & integrations
Has API
RESTful Stats API with no rate limit on statistics endpoints.
Yes
Tracking Script Size (KB)
3.5 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
26.6 KB Compressed (over-the-wire) size of ppms.js (standalone analytics library). Full container including Tag Manager + Consent Manager is ~60.6 KB compressed.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin published by Emvi Software GmbH on wordpress.org.
Yes
Email Reports
Scheduled weekly and monthly email summary reports are supported.
Yes
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be made public or shared via private access links without requiring viewer accounts.
Publicly shareable links available for dashboards and standard reports (not custom reports). Links are valid for 90 days and marked as an experimental feature.
The verdict
Pirsch Analytics Best for cheap, open-source, consent-free analytics
Entry pricing starts at $6/mo vs Piwik PRO's $40.38, with a 3.5 KB script (vs 26.6 KB) and no consent banner required by default. It is open source (AGPLv3), self-hostable, ships unlimited retention, and imports Google Analytics history. Trade-off: no heatmaps, and it is built by a 2-person team.
Full profile Piwik PRO Best for high-volume tracking with heatmaps
Its entry Business plan meters 2M actions/month vs Pirsch's 10k pageviews, and it adds heatmaps Pirsch lacks, backed by a ~190-person vendor. The cost: $40.38/mo entry (vs $6), a 26.6 KB script, proprietary and not self-hostable, capped 25-month retention, and no Google Analytics data import.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
pirsch.io piwik.pro help.piwik.pro docs.pirsch.io github.com developers.piwik.pro + 3 more
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