Web Analytics · Comparison
Plausible Analytics vs. Statcounter
Plausible Analytics 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.
Plausible Analytics
Open-source, privacy-first web analytics — a lightweight, cookieless Google Analytics alternative.
Statcounter
Simple real-time web analytics tracking visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and page performance.
Company facts
Headquarters
EU (remote-first)
Dublin, Ireland Headquartered at Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor's Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Employees
10
8 Very small team; multiple sources indicate 7–10 employees as of 2024–2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$9 Starter plan at $9/mo (monthly billing); 10k pageviews, 1 site
$9 Premium plan starts at $9/month for 20,000 sessions/month.
Offers Free Tier
Plausible Community Edition (CE) is a free self-hostable open-source version
Basic plan is free forever with 5,000 sessions/month and 14 days data retention.
Free Trial Length (Days)
30 days 30-day free trial on all paid plans, no credit card required
30 days 30-day free trial on paid plans, no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
10k Starter plan includes up to 10k monthly pageviews
20k Entry Premium plan includes 20,000 sessions/month. Statcounter uses 'sessions' not pageviews.
Entry Plan Website Limit
1 sites Starter plan covers 1 site; Growth allows up to 3, Business up to 10
—
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Real-time dashboard updates every 30 seconds
Live visitor feed and real-time visitor updates available on all plans including free Basic.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom event tracking available via JS snippet, CSS class, or Events API
Statcounter does not support user-defined custom events. Goal tracking is URL/page-based only.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Supports pageview goals and custom event goals with conversion rate reporting
Supports URL-based conversion goal tracking; shows conversion rate from landing page to goal URL.
Funnels
Funnel analysis is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)
No multi-step funnel analysis feature found in Statcounter's product.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue tracking (monetary values on events) is a Business plan feature ($19/mo+)
No ecommerce or revenue tracking feature found; no monetary value attribution in any report.
Heatmaps
No
Interactive click heatmaps available on Premium Plus plan ($19/mo and above).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
No cookies or persistent identifiers used by default; daily-rotating anonymous hash only
Statcounter sets a persistent analytics cookie ('is_unique') by default. No cookieless tracking mode available.
Consent Banner Required
No cookie banner needed — Plausible collects no personal data and sets no cookies
Statcounter sets persistent analytics cookies; a consent banner is required for EU/ePrivacy compliance.
GDPR Compliant
Yes
Statcounter claims GDPR compatibility, arguing it is anonymous tracking and IP addresses are not personal data under its use.
EU Data Residency
Data stored in Falkenstein, Germany on Hetzner servers; CDN via Bunny (Slovenia)
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
Community Edition (CE) is AGPLv3; cloud product is built on same open-source codebase
Statcounter is a proprietary closed-source SaaS product.
License
AGPLv3
proprietary Closed-source SaaS with a proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
Plausible Community Edition (CE) is officially supported for self-hosting
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting or on-premises option available.
Data Retention (Months)
36 mo Starter and Growth plans retain 3 years (36 months) of data; Business/Enterprise retain 5+ years
36 mo Entry Premium plan retains data for 3 years (36 months).
Unlimited Data Retention
Starter/Growth: 3-year retention; Business: 5-year retention
Entry Premium plan has a 3-year (36-month) data retention limit; Premium Plus is 5 years.
Google Analytics Import
Official GA4 import supported (up to 5 GA4 properties); Universal Analytics (UA) not supported
No Google Analytics historical data import tool found.
Raw Data Export
CSV/ZIP exports available on all plans; Stats API on Business plan; raw event-level export requires Enterprise
Only aggregated summary reports are exportable as CSV/Excel; raw visit-level data export is not available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Stats API is a Business plan feature; Events API (for sending data) available on all plans
Statcounter API at api.statcounter.com allows programmatic access to analytics data; requires paid plan.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
1.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
17.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin maintained by Plausible
Official Statcounter plugin published on wordpress.org under the vendor's name.
Email Reports
Weekly (every Monday) and/or monthly (1st of month) email reports; analytics embedded in email
Scheduled email reports available daily, weekly, or monthly with customizable stat selection.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Shared links (optionally password-protected) and fully public dashboards supported
Stats can be made publicly viewable via a 'Public Stats' option; no login required to view.
The verdict
Plausible Analytics Best for privacy-first, consent-free analytics you can own
Plausible tracks without cookies, so no consent banner is needed, and stores data in the EU. It is open-source (AGPLv3) and self-hostable, with raw data export and GA4 import. Its script is 1.2 KB vs Statcounter's 17.2 KB. It also adds custom events, funnels, and revenue tracking that Statcounter lacks.
Full profile Statcounter Best for heatmaps and a free-forever entry tier
Statcounter offers click heatmaps, which Plausible does not. Its free Basic plan runs indefinitely (5k sessions, 14-day retention), while Plausible's free tier is self-hosted only. At the same $9 entry price it allows 20k sessions vs Plausible's 10k pageviews. Trade-offs: cookie-based tracking needing a consent banner, no EU data residency, and no raw data export.
Full profileSources · 38 verified references
plausible.io statcounter.com tracxn.com github.com api.statcounter.com wordpress.org
Affiliate disclosure. DecisionWire may earn a commission when you sign up through links on this page. Commissions never influence our data, scores, or rankings.