Best-of list · by use case
If Google Analytics feels like more than you need, or you'd rather not show a cookie banner for basic stats, a privacy-friendly tool is the usual answer. They differ on price, hosting, open source and how much they measure.
None of these are ours. Prices are from each vendor's site at the time of writing (September 2026). Whatever you pick, pair it with Google Search Console for search data; it's free and it's what our own SEO work runs on.
Disclosure: LaunchRanked is our product. Where we list it, we say so, and we place it under the use case it fits rather than at the top by default. Everything else here is from the vendors’ own sites or our research, and we say where they’re better.
Grouped by use case; order within a group is not a ranking. Prices at the time of writing (September 2026).
| Tool | Use case | Best for | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible | One small site, lowest price | A single site that wants simple, EU-hosted stats. | From $9/mo (10k pageviews); 30-day trial, no card |
| Fathom | Many sites, one bill | Portfolios and agencies. | From $15/mo (100k pageviews, 50 sites) |
| Simple Analytics | Free for a side project | Hobby sites and teams comparing against GA4. | Free hobby plan (badge required); $20/mo for 100k pageviews |
| Umami | Free for a side project | Self-hosters who want a permissive license and more features. | Self-host free (MIT); cloud free account, paid tiers not verified |
| PostHog | Inside your product, not just the website | Understanding what users do after sign-up. | Free monthly tier (1M events, 5K recordings, 1M flag requests); usage-based above |
| UTM builder (ours) | Free helpers | Knowing which launch or post sent traffic. | Free |
From $9/mo (10k pageviews); 30-day trial, no card
One-page dashboard, built and hosted in the EU, open source with a self-hosted Community Edition (AGPL).
From $15/mo (100k pageviews, 50 sites)
Cookie-free analytics with every feature on every plan and EU traffic routed through European-owned infrastructure.
Free hobby plan (badge required); $20/mo for 100k pageviews
EU-hosted, no cookies or personal data; can run alongside GA4 to measure traffic lost to consent.
Self-host free (MIT); cloud free account, paid tiers not verified
Open-source analytics with events, funnels, retention, session replays and heatmaps, without cookies.
Free monthly tier (1M events, 5K recordings, 1M flag requests); usage-based above
Product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys and more; US or EU cloud; open-source version (MIT).
Free
Builds tagged campaign links so launches, newsletters and posts show up properly in any analytics tool.
Plausible, Fathom, Umami and Simple Analytics all say they don't use cookies and are built so a banner isn't needed for them. Your other scripts may still need one; check your own legal advice.
Plausible (Community Edition, AGPL), Umami (MIT) and PostHog (an MIT-licensed version). Fathom and Simple Analytics are closed-source services.
Yes, for search. Web analytics show visits; Search Console shows the queries, impressions and positions that brought them.
Checked on their own sites on 23 September 2026. Prices and terms change, so check before you buy. Domain ratings are approximate third-party estimates.
Umami Cloud's paid prices weren't readable on 2026-09-23.