Clicktag: a Cloudflare Web Analytics alternative with events and goals

Cloudflare Web Analytics is free and available on all Cloudflare plans, but it does not support custom events or UTM parameters yet. It has a soft limit of 10 sites when not proxied through Cloudflare, gives access to the previous 6 months of data, and aggregates beacon data down to around 10% after 7 days. Clicktag is a free alternative that gives you custom events, goals, funnels, UTM reports and Search Console data for up to 50 websites, with no cookies and no credit card.

Where Cloudflare Web Analytics hits its limits

Cloudflare Web Analytics reports high-level traffic metrics, page load time and Core Web Vitals, with dimensions such as path, referrer, country, device, browser and operating system. Once you try to measure what visitors actually do on a page or which campaign brought them in, you run into hard limits on what the tool records.

• No custom events: Cloudflare's FAQ answers "Not yet" when asked about custom events. You can't track button clicks, signup submissions, outbound link clicks or file downloads.
• No UTM reports: Query strings aren't logged, and the FAQ answers "Not yet" on UTM parameters. Traffic from newsletters, paid campaigns or social posts can't be broken down by utm_source, utm_medium or utm_campaign.
• Sampling after 7 days: The beacon fires on every pageview with no sampling at ingestion, but unsampled data is stored for only 7 days, then aggregated down to around 10%. History stops at the previous 6 months.
• Site and rule caps: If your sites aren't proxied through Cloudflare, you get a soft limit of 10 sites. Web Analytics rules work on proxied sites only and are capped at 0 on the Free plan, 5 on Pro, 20 on Business and 100 on Enterprise.

Clicktag vs Cloudflare Web Analytics

Both tools are free. Clicktag focuses on what happens after a visitor lands: event tracking, conversion goals, multi-step funnels and campaign attribution.

Prices and limits checked on October 29, 2026, on each vendor's official pricing or help pages.

Events, goals, funnels and UTM reports in Clicktag

Installing Clicktag takes one async script tag (latest.js, about 4 KB compressed) that you copy from Site settings > Installation. It works with plain HTML, React with Vite and the Next.js App Router, and tracks single-page app navigation through pushState and popstate automatically.

To track actions beyond pageviews, call window.tt_event(name, metadata, callback) in the browser or send a JSON POST to /events from your backend with no API key required. Event names can be up to 256 characters. Event metadata is stored up to 4,096 characters, though metadata can't be grouped or filtered in reports, so put what you want to compare into the event name itself.

window.tt_event("signup_button_clicked", { plan: "free" });

Once your events and pageviews are flowing, you can set up to 50 goals per site. A goal is either a page view or a custom event, and goals are computed at query time, so a new goal applies to past data too. You also get funnel analytics with 2 to 6 steps completed in order on the same UTC day, complete with median and p90 time to convert.

For campaign tracking, Clicktag reports utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign out of the box (note that utm_term and utm_content are not report dimensions). When attributing traffic, Clicktag checks utm_source first, then the source or ref query parameter, then the referring host. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to links it shows, so ChatGPT clicks appear cleanly under chatgpt.com alongside Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. You can also connect Search Console analytics to backfill up to 16 months of Google queries, clicks, impressions and CTR right next to your traffic.

Using Cloudflare and Clicktag together for AI crawlers

You don't have to drop Cloudflare to use Clicktag; a read-only Cloudflare token lets Clicktag show AI crawler hits from Cloudflare's own request data.

A JavaScript tracker can miss AI bots entirely: a Vercel and MERJ study published in December 2024 found that none of the major AI crawlers it tested, including GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, rendered JavaScript. If your domain is proxied through Cloudflare (on any plan, including Free), Clicktag can read crawler requests straight from Cloudflare's analytics for AI crawler analytics.

1. Verify your site in Clicktag and make sure its domain is proxied through Cloudflare.
2. Open your site's settings in Clicktag, go to Integrations and find Cloudflare.
3. Click Create a read-only token, which opens Cloudflare with Zone Read and Analytics Read pre-selected, then paste the token into Paste the token and click Connect.

Clicktag imports the last 30 days of crawler data on connect and syncs every 15 minutes after that. Cloudflare drops this data after 31 days, but Clicktag stores it per hour so your crawler history keeps growing. The Crawlers tab separates verified bots (checked against Cloudflare's categories and published IP ranges from OpenAI, Perplexity, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Common Crawl and DuckDuckGo) from unverified user-agent claims, and flags 401, 403 and 429 responses as blocked. The public demo shows the visitor reports with synthetic sample data; crawler data appears once your own site is connected.

Clicktag or Cloudflare Web Analytics: which to pick

Pick Clicktag if you want custom events, goals, funnels and email reports on top of your traffic numbers, plus AI crawler hits read from the same Cloudflare account, free for up to 50 websites.

Cloudflare Web Analytics fits if high-level traffic, top pages, referrers, countries and Core Web Vitals are all you need, and proxied accounts can view aggregate data for up to 1,000 websites.

FAQ

Is Clicktag really free, or is there a paid tier?

Clicktag is completely free, with every feature included and no credit card required. There is no paid plan today, and you can track up to 50 websites per account with a Google sign-in.

Does Clicktag use cookies or store IP addresses?

No. Clicktag uses no cookies, uses no local storage, and never stores IP addresses. Visitors are counted using a daily salted SHA-256 hash where the salt is deleted shortly after each UTC day ends, and retention cohorts use a once-a-day check through the browser's HTTP cache.

What are the limits of Cloudflare Web Analytics?

Cloudflare Web Analytics has a soft limit of 10 websites when not proxied through Cloudflare, gives access to the previous 6 months of data, and aggregates beacon data down to about 10% after 7 days. It does not support custom events or UTM parameters, and Free plan users get 0 Web Analytics rules.

Does Clicktag track button clicks and file downloads automatically?

No. The latest.js script tracks pageviews and single-page app navigation automatically, but it does not record clicks, outbound links, file downloads or form submissions on its own. You track those by calling window.tt_event(name, metadata, callback) or posting JSON to /events.

Can I use Clicktag's AI crawler tracking on the Cloudflare Free plan?

Yes. Clicktag's Cloudflare integration works on any Cloudflare plan, including Free, as long as your domain is proxied through Cloudflare and verified in Clicktag. Hit counts on the Crawlers tab are Cloudflare's sample-adjusted estimates.