Matomo vs Umami

The one question that decides this

Do you want an analytics product that is trying to be a full Google Analytics replacement, or do you want a simpler privacy-focused analytics layer that avoids the GA bloat pile entirely? That is the real split between Matomo and Umami. Matomo describes itself as “the leading open-source alternative to Google Analytics,” with “complete control and built-in privacy.” Umami calls itself “a modern, privacy-focused analytics platform” and an open-source alternative to Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Amplitude, but its own tagline is the tell: “Simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics.”

What each one is actually trying to be

Matomo: the heavyweight Google Analytics replacement

Matomo is trying to be the serious, full-surface-area answer to Google Analytics. Its tagline is “The Google Analytics alternative that protects your data,” and the GitHub description leans hard into control, privacy, and replacing the default Google-shaped analytics stack. This is not subtle positioning. Matomo wants to be the thing you can put in front of stakeholders who are asking, “Fine, if not Google Analytics, then what?”

That also means Matomo carries itself like an older, broader product. The repo is PHP, licensed GPL-3.0, and has a lot of visible mass around it: 21,738 stars, 2,883 forks, and 2,554 open issues. Those numbers say “established,” but they also say “large surface area, long tail, and probably some issue tracker archaeology.” That is not automatically bad. It is just what happens when a project has been around long enough to absorb every analytics edge case humans can produce.

Umami: the clean analytics tool for people tired of analytics tools

Umami is optimizing for the opposite emotional state: you do not want to build a shrine to dashboards. You want useful analytics, privacy focus, and a setup that does not make you feel like you accidentally became an analytics administrator. Its tagline is “Simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics,” and that word “simple” is doing real work. This is the product for teams that look at GA and see ten menus where there should be two answers.

The GitHub description expands the ambition a bit: “Umami is a modern, privacy-focused analytics platform. An open-source alternative to Google Analytics, Mixpanel and Amplitude.” So it is not only positioning against Google Analytics, but also against event/product analytics tools. Still, the public shape of the project screams lightweight compared with Matomo: TypeScript, MIT license, 38,040 stars, 7,687 forks, and 110 open issues. It looks like the internet’s default recommendation when someone says, “I just need analytics and I don’t want the enterprise sludge.”

Head-to-head: the metrics

Matomo’s GitHub repo, matomo-org/matomo, has 21,738 stars, 2,883 forks, a GPL-3.0 license, 2,554 open issues, and a last push date of 2026-08-03. It is written in PHP. Umami’s repo, umami-software/umami, has 38,040 stars, 7,687 forks, an MIT license, 110 open issues, and a last push date of 2026-08-03. It is written in TypeScript.

The first obvious signal is popularity: Umami has more stars and more forks. That does not mean it is “better,” because GitHub stars are half technical interest and half internet applause button. But it does tell us Umami has a lot of mindshare, especially among developers who like modern, lightweight self-hosted tools. Matomo’s lower star count does not make it small; 21,738 stars is still a major open-source footprint. It just does not have the same GitHub-native hype curve.

The license difference matters depending on how allergic your company is to copyleft. Matomo is GPL-3.0. Umami is MIT. For ordinary self-hosting, either may be workable, but legal comfort varies a lot by company. If your org has a policy that treats GPL as radioactive regardless of actual deployment model, Umami is going to be the easier conversation. If your org is comfortable with GPL and values a more established Google Analytics replacement, Matomo remains very much in play.

The open issue count is where the numbers look lopsided: Matomo has 2,554 open issues, while Umami has 110. That does not prove Matomo is broken or Umami is flawless. Bigger, older projects accumulate issue history, feature requests, support questions, duplicates, and “this broke in my one weird environment” reports. But it is still a real maintenance signal. A giant issue tracker can mean maturity, but it can also mean you may spend more time spelunking before you know whether your problem is new, known, ignored, fixed somewhere else, or spiritually unresolved.

The last-push dates are identical: both show 2026-08-03. That tells us both repos are fresh by the data provided. It does not tell us release quality, roadmap sanity, responsiveness, or whether the last push was a meaningful change. GitHub metrics are useful smoke signals, not a CT scan. They tell you activity, popularity, licensing posture, and rough community gravity. They do not tell you whether either product matches your analytics requirements, migration pain, compliance needs, or dashboard tolerance.

Self-hosting

Matomo supports both self-host and official-cloud, with a deploy difficulty of 3 out of 5. That tracks with the product’s positioning: it is not presented as a tiny paste-in-and-forget analytics toy. It is a fuller analytics system, and the deployment difficulty reflects that middle ground. Not impossible, not frictionless. The official SaaS price provided is $23/month, so if you want the Matomo worldview without owning the hosting, there is a paid hosted path.

Umami also supports both self-host and official-cloud, with a deploy difficulty of 1 out of 5. That is the clearest practical advantage in this comparison. If your team wants to replace Google Analytics without turning the replacement into a new platform project, Umami is the lower-friction bet from the data here. Its official SaaS price is listed as $9/month, which fits the same story: smaller tool, cheaper hosted option, less ceremony.

Community signals

Matomo has one Hacker News mention in the last 90 days in the provided data. Its top HN story is “My site was disallowed from advertising on Google when using Matomo analytics,” posted by funshed, with 364 points and 114 comments. That is not a clean product endorsement, and pretending otherwise would be marketing paste. It does show Matomo sits close enough to the Google Analytics and advertising ecosystem that people argue about the consequences of using it.

The Reddit data provided for Matomo is not meaningfully about Matomo. The top Reddit post is “Summer time!” from r/asamitaka, with 4,156 upvotes and 19 comments. That is a community signal only in the most cursed spreadsheet sense. It should not influence your analytics tooling decision unless your procurement process has been replaced by a random content aggregator.

Umami also has one Hacker News mention in the last 90 days in the provided data. Its top HN story is much more directly relevant: “Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics,” posted by bananaoomarang, with 820 points and 227 comments. That is a strong visibility signal for the exact use case under discussion. It does not prove the software is perfect, but it does show the project has earned attention from the kind of audience that actually self-hosts things and complains intelligently when they hurt.

The Reddit data provided for Umami is also useless for evaluating Umami. The top Reddit post is “Blackberry Season has arrived in Oregon - Pizza Time! [homemade]” from r/food, with 3,283 upvotes and 429 comments. Great for dinner discourse, not analytics procurement. We are citing it because it was provided, but there is no honest way to turn that into evidence about Umami.

What we'd do

Pick Matomo if you want the more explicit Google Analytics replacement: broader posture, stronger “complete control” framing, and a project that looks built for teams trying to move off GA without giving up the idea of a full analytics platform. Pick Umami if you want the cleaner, faster path away from Google Analytics: simpler positioning, lower deploy difficulty, MIT licensing, fewer open issues, and a much lighter operational smell. For most small teams, blogs, docs sites, and SaaS apps that just want sane privacy-focused analytics, we’d start with Umami. For organizations that need something closer to a full GA alternative and are willing to carry the weight, Matomo is the more serious bet.