Web Analytics · Comparison
Pirsch Analytics vs. Simple Analytics
Pirsch Analytics and Simple 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.
Pirsch Analytics
Server-side, cookieless web analytics hosted in Germany, built for GDPR compliance.
Simple Analytics
Privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics that requires no consent banner.
Company facts
Headquarters
Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany Emvi Software GmbH registered at Nickelstraße 1b, 33378 Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany.
Amsterdam, Netherlands Dutch company (Simple Analytics B.V.); founders and operations based in Amsterdam.
Employees
2 Pirsch is a two-person team: Marvin Blum (backend/infra) and Daniel Schramm (design/UX).
3 Very small team — founder Adriaan van Rossum plus a couple of team members as of 2024/2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$6 Standard plan starts at $6/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews (as of June 2026).
$20 Self-Serve plan at $20/month (monthly billing); entry slider point is 100k pageviews. 2 months free with annual billing.
Offers Free Tier
No perpetual free plan; only a 30-day free trial is offered.
Perpetually free plan available; analytics history limited to 30 days on the free tier.
Free Trial Length (Days)
30 days 30-day free trial with no credit card required.
14 days 14-day free trial on paid plans; no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
10k Standard entry plan includes 10,000 monthly pageviews at $6/month.
100k Self-Serve plan starts at 100,000 pageviews/month (adjustable up to 2.5M via slider).
Entry Plan Website Limit
50 sites Standard entry plan covers up to 50 websites.
10 sites Starter plan covers up to 10 websites.
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Live visitor count and real-time visitor map are core dashboard features.
Live visitor stats; embeddable live-stats widget for your own site.
Custom Event Tracking
User-defined custom events supported via JS snippet or server-side API.
Custom events supported via sa_event() JS call, data attributes, and server-side API.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Conversion goals can be defined against events or pageviews with conversion rate reporting.
Goals feature reports conversion rates for defined events or pageview paths.
Funnels
Multi-step funnel analysis (up to 8 steps) is available on the Plus plan.
Multi-step funnels supported via Goals; can chain events and pageviews with step-by-step drop-off.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracked via custom events with monetary metadata; Shopify integration available.
Revenue values can be attached to events via metadata (e.g. revenue, order value) and reported in Goals.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are not offered; a feature request exists on the forum but is unimplemented.
No heatmap feature — Simple Analytics is a minimalist analytics tool focused on traffic stats.
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Cookieless by design; uses a daily-rotating fingerprint hash with no browser cookies.
Tracking is cookieless by design — no cookies or persistent identifiers are set.
Consent Banner Required
Pirsch explicitly states no cookie consent banner is needed for its analytics.
Vendor explicitly states no cookie or consent banner is required when using Simple Analytics.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor claims GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II compliance.
Vendor states it fully adheres to GDPR and UK GDPR by not collecting personal data.
EU Data Residency
All analytics data stored on Hetzner servers in Falkenstein, Germany.
Data stored in the Netherlands on Dutch-hosted servers (Worldstream, Leaseweb); never leaves the EU.
Data ownership & deployment
Open Source
Core analytics library is open source (AGPLv3) on GitHub.
Core SaaS product is proprietary; only the public tracking scripts are MIT-licensed open source.
License
AGPLv3 Core analytics library (pirsch-analytics/pirsch) is licensed under AGPLv3.
proprietary Core analytics platform is proprietary SaaS; tracking scripts are MIT-licensed.
Self-Hostable
Self-hosting available via Enterprise License for on-premise deployment.
Cloud-only SaaS product; no documented self-hosting or on-premises option.
Data Retention (Months)
—
36 mo Simple plan: 3 years
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.
Official Google Analytics 4 (GA4) import tool; heavily filtered for privacy.
Raw Data Export
Stats API enables full programmatic data retrieval; CSV export and raw exports on request also available.
Export API provides raw event-level data export; CSV export and data warehouse integrations also available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
RESTful Stats API with no rate limit on statistics endpoints.
Stats API, Export API, and Admin API all documented.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
3.5 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
3.8 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin published by Emvi Software GmbH on wordpress.org.
Official WordPress plugin at wordpress.org/plugins/simpleanalytics/ maintained by Simple Analytics.
Email Reports
Scheduled weekly and monthly email summary reports are supported.
Built-in weekly and monthly email reports; sent at 9AM in local timezone with top referrers summary.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be made public or shared via private access links without requiring viewer accounts.
Dashboards can be made fully public or shared via link; Simple Analytics publishes their own publicly.
The verdict
Pirsch Analytics Best for low entry cost, many sites, and data ownership
Pirsch starts at $6/month versus Simple Analytics' $20, and its entry plan covers 50 websites against 10. It is open source (AGPLv3) and self-hostable, while Simple Analytics is proprietary and cloud-only. Pirsch also keeps data with unlimited retention, where Simple Analytics caps it at 36 months. The trade-off: its entry plan includes only 10k monthly pageviews.
Full profile Simple Analytics Best for high traffic volume and a free starting tier
Simple Analytics' $20 entry plan includes 100k monthly pageviews versus Pirsch's 10k, so high-traffic sites pay less per view. It also offers a perpetual free tier, where Pirsch gives only a 30-day trial. The trade-offs: it covers just 10 sites to Pirsch's 50, is proprietary and cloud-only, and caps retention at 36 months rather than unlimited.
Full profileSources · 41 verified references
pirsch.io datarequests.org simpleanalytics.com docs.pirsch.io docs.simpleanalytics.com github.com + 4 more
Affiliate disclosure. DecisionWire may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this page. Commissions never influence our data, scores, or rankings.