In short
Fathom for many sites on a flat price. Umami for the bare essentials. Pirsch for the cheapest entry. Simple Analytics for Dutch data residency. Matomo if you outgrew simple. mrkr if you want session replay and revenue attribution while staying cookieless by default.
Everything on this list except Microsoft Clarity is cookieless, so this is not a privacy comparison. It is a question of what you need beyond a traffic dashboard, and how many sites you are counting.
Plausible answers how many and from where, cleanly. What it does not answer is what a session looked like, whether last month’s visitors came back, and which campaign produced the revenue. If you never ask those, Plausible remains the better tool.
A salt that rotates daily, nothing persistent stored on the device. Identical across all six tools.
None of them can tell you the Monday visitor came back on Friday. Retention is directional.
An optional per-site cookie mode buys the exactness, and brings the consent obligation back.
The picks
Best for many sites on a flat price
Unlimited sites and retention that never expires, on a flat rate. For an agency or anyone with a portfolio of small sites it is the cheapest correct answer in the category. No funnels, no replay, no cohorts. It counts things well and deliberately stops there.
Best for the bare essentials
Lightweight and pleasant. Pageviews, sources, events, and funnels. No replay. Pick it if you want the smallest tool that still covers the basics.
Best for strict Dutch data residency
A Dutch company keeping data in the Netherlands, with the whole positioning built on that. If a procurement form names a jurisdiction, this is a one-sentence answer. Minimal beyond that: no funnels, no replay.
Cheapest paid entry point
German-hosted, cookieless, funnels included, and the lowest paid price here with a surprisingly high site limit. For a developer with many small projects and a tight budget it beats Plausible on arithmetic. No session replay.
Best if you outgrew simple
The deepest product in privacy analytics: funnels, cohorts, session recording, heatmaps, form analytics, tag management, ecommerce. It is also the heaviest and cookies are on by default, so the no-banner property depends on configuration rather than coming for free.
Best free session replay
Included because it is the tool most often added next to Plausible rather than instead of it. Unlimited replay and heatmaps for nothing. It sets cookies so consent applies, it has no traffic sources, and Microsoft holds the data. Not a Plausible replacement, but frequently the missing half.
Best if you want replay and revenue, with no banner by default
Our product, so the limits first: no heatmaps, no surveys, and it is newer than everything above. Plausible is more established, and for a simple traffic dashboard it is the safer choice. Where mrkr differs is depth without giving up the cookieless default: session replay, per-visitor detail, and revenue attributed to the source that produced it.
Still the default recommendation
Worth saying outright: for most sites Plausible is the right tool and this list is unnecessary. Cookieless, EU-owned, established, and deliberately minimal. The reasons to move are specific: you need session replay, you need retention curves, you have many sites and want a flatter price, or you need a named jurisdiction.
Compared
| Tool | From | Banner? | Replay | Funnels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plausible | $9/mo | No | No | Yes |
| Fathom | $15/mo | No | No | No |
| Umami | Varies | No | No | Yes |
| Simple Analytics | EUR 20/mo | No | No | No |
| Pirsch | $6/mo | No | No | Yes |
| Matomo Cloud | ~EUR 19/mo | Depends on configuration | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft Clarity | Free | Yes | Yes | Basic |
| mrkr | $1 for 14 days, then from $5/mo | No, in the default cookieless mode | Yes | Yes |
Every vendor in this table details checked against the vendor's own pricing and feature pages on 2026-08-24. Where a vendor does not publish a fixed list price, this table says how they charge rather than guessing a number. Vendors change packaging often, so confirm before you buy.
Live demo
FAQ
Four common reasons: you need session replay, which Plausible has none of at any tier. You run many sites and want a flatter price. You need a specific data-residency jurisdiction. Or you want retention curves and per-visitor detail that Plausible deliberately omits.
Fathom, Umami, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, and mrkr are cookieless by default. Matomo can be configured that way but ships with cookies on. Microsoft Clarity sets cookies and needs consent.
Matomo, Microsoft Clarity, and mrkr. Fathom, Umami, Simple Analytics, and Pirsch have no replay at any price, and neither does Plausible.
Microsoft Clarity is free for replay and heatmaps but is not a full analytics tool. Plausible, Fathom, and mrkr are all trial-only, with no free tier; mrkr's trial is $1 for 14 days rather than a free one.
Pirsch at $6 a month, with 50 sites included, is the lowest paid entry price here.
Closely on trends, not exactly on totals. Every tool here filters bots differently and defines a visit slightly differently. Run both for a month if the absolute number matters to you.
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