Google Analytics open source alternatives

The one thesis that will save you a week

Google Analytics does two things, and they are increasingly at odds with each other. It counts pageviews for you. It also feeds Google's ad-targeting machine with your visitors. GA4 made this worse by burying the metrics you actually want under an "events model" designed for the second job, not the first. So the honest question isn't "which one replaces GA4." It's do you want a pageview counter that respects your users, or do you want a full product-analytics platform?

Answer that and the four projects below sort themselves in about a minute.

Why sites are leaving Google Analytics in 2026

Three complaints keep repeating in r/webdev and r/selfhosted threads:

1. GDPR / privacy regulators keep taking positions. Austrian, French, and Italian DPAs have ruled GA data flows to the US non-compliant. Google's server-side workarounds work but are fiddly. Cookieless privacy-first analytics dodges the whole class of problem.
2. GA4 UX is worse than Universal Analytics was. Everyone complaining loudest is not a novice. They're former GA power users looking at "explorations" and asking why finding a top-pages report now takes six clicks.
3. Cookie banners cost conversion. Every extra dialog on the way to your content is a small tax on funnel top. Analytics without cookies means no consent banner at all.

The four projects on this page split neatly by ambition. Two are cookieless pageview counters (Plausible, Umami). One is a full-featured GA replacement (Matomo). One is a product-analytics platform that also does pageviews (PostHog).

The four that matter

Plausible — the sharp, minimal one

Plausible (27k stars, pushed within days, AGPL-3.0) is the archetype cookieless privacy-first analytics tool. One dashboard, one script tag, ~1 KB. No cookies, no fingerprinting, GDPR/PECR/CCPA compliant by design. Deploys as a single docker-compose stack (Postgres + ClickHouse + Elixir app).

What Plausible is not: not a product-analytics platform, not a funnel-analysis tool for a SaaS with millions of events per user. It's a website analytics tool. If your unit of analysis is "pageview" and your daily question is "which of my posts got traction this week," Plausible answers it in one screen.

Pick Plausible if: you have a marketing site, blog, or content property and you want a single clean dashboard that respects users. Also pick it if you want to point non-technical stakeholders at a URL and have them understand what they see in 30 seconds.

Skip Plausible if: you need session replay, feature flags, funnel analysis, or product-analytics workflows. It's not that Plausible does them badly. It doesn't do them.

Umami — the MIT-licensed cousin

Umami (37k stars, pushed within days, MIT) is the same shape as Plausible with a more permissive license and a lighter runtime. Node.js + Postgres or MySQL. Dashboard is comparable. Feature set is nearly identical.

The differences are subtle: Umami is fractionally faster on tiny VPS deploys because of the Node.js/Postgres stack, ships with more built-in report types out of the box, and the license question is fully boring (MIT). Plausible has a slightly nicer default dashboard aesthetic and a more established brand for the hosted product.

Pick Umami if: MIT license matters for procurement, you're already running Node/Postgres and want to keep the stack narrow, or you tried Plausible and wanted "same thing but with more report options."

Skip Umami if: you're paying for Plausible's hosted version anyway and want the self-host and cloud paths to be seamless — Plausible's own migration story is smoother.

Matomo — the full-featured GA replacement

Matomo (21k stars, pushed within days, GPL-3.0) is what you pick when you want everything Google Analytics does — heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, goals, ecommerce tracking, custom reports, tag management — and you want to run it yourself. It's the oldest and most feature-complete GA alternative in the open-source world.

The trade-off is complexity. Matomo has 15 years of features. The admin surface is dense. The default install pulls in PHP, MySQL, and a mountain of plugins. It's the right tool if you were a genuine GA power user; it's overkill if you just wanted a pageview counter that respects your users.

Pick Matomo if: you were a genuine GA power user (funnels, ecommerce goals, custom dimensions, tag manager) and you need that depth on your own infra.

Skip Matomo if: you're migrating a marketing site with three dashboards and a bounce-rate metric. Plausible or Umami will make you happier every day and never break.

PostHog — the product analytics answer

PostHog (35k stars, pushed within hours, mixed MIT + AGPL) is a different animal. It isn't primarily a website-analytics tool. It's a product-analytics platform — funnels, cohorts, feature flags, A/B tests, session replay, dashboards — that also happens to track pageviews. If your unit of analysis is "user journey through a SaaS app," this is what you actually wanted.

Self-hosted PostHog is a serious deploy (Kubernetes-friendly, ClickHouse, Kafka, Redis). PostHog Cloud has a very generous free tier (1M events/month) that most small products won't outgrow. The mix-license model means the core is MIT but some enterprise features are AGPL.

Pick PostHog if: you're running a SaaS product and you want Mixpanel/Amplitude functionality without the SaaS pricing. The website analytics is a bonus.

Skip PostHog if: your workload is "count visits to a blog." Plausible or Umami will be dramatically simpler.

Decision framework: pick by who you are, not by feature count

Personal blog, portfolio, or small content site

Pick Plausible or Umami. Either one is a script tag and a dashboard. Plausible if you want the more established brand and cleaner default aesthetic. Umami if you want the MIT license and slightly more built-in reports.

Marketing site for a small company

Pick Plausible. Non-technical stakeholders will understand it in 30 seconds. The privacy story writes itself in your privacy policy.

Ecommerce site with revenue attribution

Pick Matomo. Ecommerce tracking, funnel goals, and multichannel attribution are all there. Plausible and Umami will feel thin here.

SaaS product tracking user journeys

Pick PostHog. The others aren't really product analytics tools; PostHog is.

You're leaving GA for GDPR reasons and don't care about feature parity

Pick Plausible or Umami. Both are cookieless-by-default and don't need a consent banner. Matomo can be configured that way but requires care.

You're a genuine GA power user who used every feature

Pick Matomo. Nothing else on this list is trying to match GA's feature depth.

Deploy difficulty on a $6 VPS

Rough time-to-first-pageview on a DigitalOcean Regular Droplet ($24/mo):

• Under 30 minutes: Umami. Single docker-compose file, Postgres/MySQL choice, works.
• 1-2 hours: Plausible. Elixir app + Postgres + ClickHouse. Docs are excellent.
• 2-4 hours: Matomo. PHP + MySQL. Straightforward if you've done PHP hosting before; more moving parts otherwise.
• Half a day, seriously: PostHog self-hosted. Kubernetes-friendly, Kafka + ClickHouse + Redis + Postgres. Use PostHog Cloud until you've outgrown the 1M events/month free tier.

Resource footprint on that same CX22 (4 GB RAM):

• Umami: ~300 MB RAM, negligible CPU.
• Plausible: ~1 GB RAM (ClickHouse is the heavy one).
• Matomo: ~800 MB RAM with a small plugin set.
• PostHog: does not fit on a 4 GB box comfortably. Needs 8-16 GB minimum for real use.

License and commercial-use notes

• Permissive (Umami): MIT. Embed anywhere without copyleft obligations. Safest bucket.
• Network copyleft (Plausible, PostHog enterprise features): AGPL-3.0. Fine for internal self-hosting. If you plan to offer a modified version as a hosted service, the AGPL trigger obliges you to publish your changes.
• Copyleft (Matomo): GPL-3.0. Fine for use inside your organisation. Distributing a modified version obliges you to ship source. This rarely bites analytics-tool users but check with legal.
• Mixed (PostHog): Core is MIT, some enterprise-tier features are AGPL. Fine for standard product analytics; check licenses before building a commercial product on top of PostHog's enterprise features.

Cost math (one small site, one year)

• Google Analytics (free tier): $0 in money, non-trivial in cookie-banner conversion tax and DPA risk
• Plausible Cloud (10k pageviews/mo): $9/mo = $108/year
• Umami Cloud (10k events/mo): Free (their generous tier). Paid tiers from $9/mo.
• Matomo Cloud (50k pageviews/mo): $23/mo = $276/year
• PostHog Cloud (1M events/mo): Free (their generous tier)
• Self-hosted anything on DigitalOcean Regular Droplet: ~$290/year infra + your time

For a small site, PostHog Cloud is genuinely the best free deal on this page. For a small self-hosted deploy, Umami is the lightest.

Migration tips (from GA4 to anything else)

• Export your GA4 history as CSV from the interface (Reports → any report → three-dot menu → Download CSV). None of the tools here import GA data cleanly — treat the historical data as archive and start fresh.
• Install the new tool in parallel with GA4 for at least 30 days. Compare the numbers. They will differ (privacy-first tools count fewer visits because they don't set cookies and don't track people who deny cookie banners). Understand the delta before switching off GA.
• Update your privacy policy before the switch. Cookieless-by-default is a genuine improvement to your compliance surface — say so.
• Remove the cookie banner if you switch to Plausible or Umami. That's the whole point. Confirm with a lawyer that your remaining tracking (email, marketing pixels, etc.) doesn't force a banner anyway.
• Tag manager rewiring: Matomo has its own tag manager. If you used Google Tag Manager alongside GA, you'll rebuild those tags in the new tool.
• Ecommerce goals and revenue attribution do not transfer. Rebuild goals from scratch in Matomo (or your new tool of choice). Test with a live purchase before trusting the numbers.

What you shouldn't do

Don't self-host if you have one small site. Plausible Cloud, Umami Cloud, and PostHog Cloud all have generous small-site tiers. A $6 VPS plus your time isn't cheaper than $9/mo.

Don't pick Matomo because you want "everything GA has." You'll use 10% of it. Pick by the shape of the workload — pageview counter vs product analytics vs full GA replacement.

Don't run cookieless-by-default and still show a cookie banner because the marketing team wants "just in case." The banner is the entire tax you were trying to avoid.

Final recommendation matrix

• "I want the simplest thing that respects users" → Plausible
• "Same as above, MIT license, lighter runtime" → Umami
• "I need everything GA does, on my own infra" → Matomo
• "I'm running a SaaS product" → PostHog
• "I want the best free cloud tier" → PostHog Cloud (1M events/mo free) or Umami Cloud
• "Ecommerce site with real revenue tracking" → Matomo

See also

Teams that leave one SaaS usually leave a few. Related guides:

• Segment open source alternatives — if your GA install was upstream of a warehouse pipeline.
• ChatGPT (self-hosted) open source alternatives — for on-premises AI on the same server class.

Frequently asked questions

Which open-source Google Analytics alternative is closest to GA4 in 2026?

Matomo is the closest in feature depth. PostHog is closer if your real workload is product analytics rather than website analytics. Neither Plausible nor Umami is trying to match GA feature-for-feature — they're deliberately smaller.

Can I migrate my GA4 history?

Not cleanly into any of these tools. Export GA4 data as CSV for archive, then run the new tool in parallel for 30 days to build up fresh history. Historical GA data lives in Google's UI (until they eventually kill it); new history lives in your chosen tool.

Do these tools require a cookie banner?

Plausible and Umami are cookieless-by-default and do not require a banner under GDPR/PECR (subject to your legal counsel's read of your specific configuration). Matomo can be configured cookieless but does not default that way. PostHog uses cookies by default; can be configured otherwise.

How accurate are cookieless analytics?

Directionally accurate. Absolute numbers will be lower than GA4 for the same site — no fingerprinting, no cross-visit stitching. What you gain in return is: no consent-banner drop-off, no DPA compliance risk, and a metric that closely tracks actual reader interest rather than ad-targeting friendliness.

Which one is safest for enterprise use?

Umami (MIT) is the least legally interesting. Matomo (GPL-3.0) is safe for internal use, restrictive if you plan to distribute modified versions. Plausible (AGPL-3.0) and PostHog (mixed AGPL) are safe for internal use with the standard AGPL caveats about hosted-service distribution.

How often is the comparison data on this page updated?

GitHub metrics refresh daily. Editorial content revisits at least quarterly, sooner if a project changes materially (relicensing, major release, ownership change). The header shows the last revisited date.