What is the best privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics?
Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page on 28 August 2026.
People arrive at this question for two different reasons and the answer differs. One is the cookie banner: a tool that does not set cookies does not need consent, which removes a piece of UI everybody hates. The other is where the data physically sits, which is a compliance question and sometimes a principle.
Worth saying plainly before the list: most of the well-known names here have no free tier. Plausible, Fathom and Rybbit are trials only. If free is the requirement rather than privacy, the answer is a different tool and there is a separate guide for it.
Our pick
No cookie banner needed, GDPR and CCPA compliant, open source and self-hostable for free if you want the data on your own machine. The dashboard is one page, which is the whole idea. Two honest catches: there is no free tier, only a thirty-day trial, and pageview-tier pricing rises fast within each tier.
What we judged on
- Whether it needs a cookie banner
- Whether you can run it yourself, and whether that is supported or theoretical
- What it costs at a realistic traffic level, not the headline tier
- Whether there is a free tier at all, or only a trial
Also worth it
The one to pick if self-hosting is the plan rather than the fallback. Genuinely free and unlimited when you run it, and around $20 a month for roughly a million events if you would rather not. Fewer advanced features than PostHog, and running it means running a server and a database.
The only one here with a free tier a real site can live on: unlimited pageviews under fair use, no cookies, EU-hosted. The limit is history rather than volume, capped at thirty days, which is fine for watching a launch and not fine for year-on-year.
Unlimited sites on every plan, which makes it the cheapest option once you are running more than three or four. Not open source and not self-hostable, so the privacy argument here is a promise rather than something you can verify yourself.
Not for this job
It is free forever with unlimited session recordings and no traffic caps, and for heatmaps that is remarkable. But this is a guide about privacy, and the data is processed by Microsoft. If free matters more than where the data goes, it is a fine choice made for the right reason.
Prices, side by side
| Tool | From | Free tier |
|---|---|---|
| Plausible Analytics | From $7.50/mo | None |
| Umami | Free, then $20/mo | Self-hosting is always free and unlimited; Cloud Hobby free up to ~100k events/month |
| Simple Analytics | Free, then $16.67/mo | Unlimited pageviews under fair-use policy, 1 user, 5 websites, but only 30-day data history |
| Fathom Analytics | From $12.50/mo | None |
| Microsoft Clarity | Free | 100% free forever: unlimited session recordings and heatmaps, no traffic limits or restrictions |
Read on 28 August 2026. Every price change we have recorded.
Questions people ask
Which privacy-first analytics tool is actually free?
Simple Analytics has a free tier with unlimited pageviews under fair use, capped at thirty days of history. Umami is free and unlimited if you self-host it. Plausible, Fathom and Rybbit have no free tier at all, only trials.
Do these still need a cookie banner?
No. Plausible, Fathom, Umami and Simple Analytics are cookieless by design, which is what removes the consent requirement. That is the practical reason most people switch, ahead of the principle.
Can I self-host any of these?
Plausible, Umami, Rybbit and PostHog are open source and self-hostable. Umami is the one where self-hosting is the main path rather than an option, and it is free and unlimited that way.
This is one question about data analytics. See all 18 compared, or browse the other guides.