Web Analytics · Comparison
Simple Analytics vs. Statcounter
Simple 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.
Simple Analytics
Privacy-friendly, cookieless web analytics that requires no consent banner.
Statcounter
Simple real-time web analytics tracking visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and page performance.
Company facts
Headquarters
Amsterdam, Netherlands Dutch company (Simple Analytics B.V.); founders and operations based in Amsterdam.
Dublin, Ireland Headquartered at Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor's Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland.
Employees
3 Very small team — founder Adriaan van Rossum plus a couple of team members as of 2024/2025.
8 Very small team; multiple sources indicate 7–10 employees as of 2024–2025.
Pricing
Starting Monthly Price (USD)
$20 Self-Serve plan at $20/month (monthly billing); entry slider point is 100k pageviews. 2 months free with annual billing.
$9 Premium plan starts at $9/month for 20,000 sessions/month.
Offers Free Tier
Perpetually free plan available; analytics history limited to 30 days on the free tier.
Basic plan is free forever with 5,000 sessions/month and 14 days data retention.
Free Trial Length (Days)
14 days 14-day free trial on paid plans; no credit card required.
30 days 30-day free trial on paid plans, no credit card required.
Entry Plan Pageview Limit (Monthly)
100k Self-Serve plan starts at 100,000 pageviews/month (adjustable up to 2.5M via slider).
20k Entry Premium plan includes 20,000 sessions/month. Statcounter uses 'sessions' not pageviews.
Entry Plan Website Limit
10 sites Starter plan covers up to 10 websites.
—
Analytics capabilities
Real-Time Dashboard
Live visitor stats; embeddable live-stats widget for your own site.
Live visitor feed and real-time visitor updates available on all plans including free Basic.
Custom Event Tracking
Custom events supported via sa_event() JS call, data attributes, and server-side API.
Statcounter does not support user-defined custom events. Goal tracking is URL/page-based only.
Goal / Conversion Tracking
Goals feature reports conversion rates for defined events or pageview paths.
Supports URL-based conversion goal tracking; shows conversion rate from landing page to goal URL.
Funnels
Multi-step funnels supported via Goals; can chain events and pageviews with step-by-step drop-off.
No multi-step funnel analysis feature found in Statcounter's product.
Ecommerce / Revenue Tracking
Revenue values can be attached to events via metadata (e.g. revenue, order value) and reported in Goals.
No ecommerce or revenue tracking feature found; no monetary value attribution in any report.
Heatmaps
No heatmap feature — Simple Analytics is a minimalist analytics tool focused on traffic stats.
Interactive click heatmaps available on Premium Plus plan ($19/mo and above).
Privacy & compliance
Cookieless Tracking
Tracking is cookieless by design — no cookies or persistent identifiers are set.
Statcounter sets a persistent analytics cookie ('is_unique') by default. No cookieless tracking mode available.
Consent Banner Required
Vendor explicitly states no cookie or consent banner is required when using Simple Analytics.
Statcounter sets persistent analytics cookies; a consent banner is required for EU/ePrivacy compliance.
GDPR Compliant
Vendor states it fully adheres to GDPR and UK GDPR by not collecting personal data.
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 the Netherlands on Dutch-hosted servers (Worldstream, Leaseweb); never leaves the EU.
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
Core SaaS product is proprietary; only the public tracking scripts are MIT-licensed open source.
Statcounter is a proprietary closed-source SaaS product.
License
proprietary Core analytics platform is proprietary SaaS; tracking scripts are MIT-licensed.
proprietary Closed-source SaaS with a proprietary license.
Self-Hostable
Cloud-only SaaS product; no documented self-hosting or on-premises option.
Cloud-only SaaS; no self-hosting or on-premises option available.
Data Retention (Months)
36 mo Simple plan: 3 years
36 mo Entry Premium plan retains data for 3 years (36 months).
Unlimited Data Retention
No
Entry Premium plan has a 3-year (36-month) data retention limit; Premium Plus is 5 years.
Google Analytics Import
Official Google Analytics 4 (GA4) import tool; heavily filtered for privacy.
No Google Analytics historical data import tool found.
Raw Data Export
Export API provides raw event-level data export; CSV export and data warehouse integrations also available.
Only aggregated summary reports are exportable as CSV/Excel; raw visit-level data export is not available.
Platform & integrations
Has API
Stats API, Export API, and Admin API all documented.
Statcounter API at api.statcounter.com allows programmatic access to analytics data; requires paid plan.
Tracking Script Size (KB)
3.8 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
17.2 KB Measured compressed transfer size.
Official WordPress Plugin
Official WordPress plugin at wordpress.org/plugins/simpleanalytics/ maintained by Simple Analytics.
Official Statcounter plugin published on wordpress.org under the vendor's name.
Email Reports
Built-in weekly and monthly email reports; sent at 9AM in local timezone with top referrers summary.
Scheduled email reports available daily, weekly, or monthly with customizable stat selection.
Public Dashboard Sharing
Dashboards can be made fully public or shared via link; Simple Analytics publishes their own publicly.
Stats can be made publicly viewable via a 'Public Stats' option; no login required to view.
The verdict
Simple Analytics Best for cookieless, EU-resident privacy analytics
Tracks without cookies, so no consent banner is required, and stores data in the EU (Netherlands) — neither of which Statcounter offers, as it sets a persistent cookie and gives no EU data-residency guarantee. Adds custom events, funnels, ecommerce/revenue tracking, GA4 import, and raw event-level export that Statcounter lacks, on a lighter 3.8 KB script vs 17.2 KB.
Full profile Statcounter Best for cheapest paid entry with heatmaps
Its paid plan starts at $9/month versus Simple Analytics' $20, and it includes click heatmaps, which Simple Analytics does not offer. The free trial runs 30 days against Simple Analytics' 14. Trade-offs: it sets a persistent cookie (consent banner required), gives no EU data residency, and lacks custom events, funnels, and raw data export.
Full profileSources · 38 verified references
datarequests.org statcounter.com simpleanalytics.com tracxn.com 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.