Privacy-friendly analytics tools: 12 options and their real limits

Privacy-friendly analytics tools count your website traffic without setting browser cookies, storing visitor IP addresses, or tracking people across different websites. Clicktag does this for free on up to 50 websites. Below are 12 options compared by what their free tiers actually include, where their paid plans start, and what features they leave out.

What privacy-friendly means on this page

On this page, privacy-friendly is a technical description of how a tracker works:

• No cookies or local storage: No identifiers are written to the visitor's device.
• No stored IP addresses: Raw IP addresses are not kept, and daily unique visitors come from a hash with a salt that changes every day.
• No cross-site tracking: Visits cannot be linked across different sites.

Clicktag meets all three: its daily hash includes the site, and the salt is deleted shortly after each UTC day ends. Read how daily hashing works in our guide to cookieless analytics.

12 privacy-friendly analytics tools compared

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

Tool-by-tool breakdown

Clicktag

Clicktag is free with no credit card, for up to 50 websites per account. Its ~4 KB script (latest.js) sets no cookies, data is stored in Frankfurt, and you get custom events, AI crawler analytics and a 16-month Search Console backfill. Try the live demo (synthetic sample data).

Plausible

Plausible sets no cookies and offers a 30-day trial without a credit card (plausible.io). Growth ($14/month) covers 3 sites, and Business ($19/month) covers 10 sites with custom properties and the Stats API.

Fathom Analytics

Fathom's 7-day trial requires a credit card (usefathom.com/pricing). It lists event and revenue tracking, UTM tracking and full history while you stay subscribed; after $15/month for 100,000 pageviews, 200,000 pageviews cost $25/month.

Simple Analytics

The free plan covers 1 user and 5 websites with 1 month of history and a required badge (simpleanalytics.com/pricing). Paid plans start at EUR 20/month for 100,000 pageviews, plus EUR 20/month per extra user. Clicktag can import your Simple Analytics history.

Umami Cloud

Umami sets no cookies, and Hobby is $0 for 100,000 monthly events on 1 website with 6 months of retention (umami.is/pricing). Pro ($20/month) adds 10 team members, and Business ($200/month) adds 5,000 session replays and heatmaps.

Pirsch

Pirsch is cookieless and has a 30-day trial with no credit card (pirsch.io/pricing). Standard ($6/month) includes 50 websites, unlimited team members, unlimited data retention and conversion goals; Plus ($12/month) adds funnels, A/B testing and white labeling.

Cabin

Cabin sets no cookies, and its free tier keeps 30 days of data (withcabin.com/pricing). Plus ($14/month) adds custom events and 12 months of retention; Scale ($45/month) covers 5,000,000 pageviews with unlimited retention.

Rybbit

Rybbit has a 7-day free trial (rybbit.com/pricing). Standard includes custom events, funnels, goals, journeys and web vitals; Pro ($26/month billed annually) adds unlimited websites, session replays and 5 years of retention.

Swetrix

Swetrix is cookieless with no data sampling, and its 14-day trial requires a payment method (swetrix.com/pricing). Plus (EUR 35/month) adds 100 websites, session replays, feature flags and A/B testing.

GoatCounter

GoatCounter is open source, sets no cookies and has a ~3.5 KB script. You can self-host it or use the donation-supported hosted service, free for "reasonable public usage" (goatcounter.com). Unlike Clicktag, which drops Do Not Track requests, GoatCounter ignores Do Not Track.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Cloudflare Web Analytics is available on all Cloudflare plans: 10 sites when not proxied, no limit when proxied (developers.cloudflare.com/web-analytics). Data stays unsampled for 7 days, then is aggregated to about 10%, with six months of history. UTM parameters and custom events aren't supported yet.

Vercel Web Analytics

Vercel identifies visitors by a hash of the request instead of third-party cookies and discards the session after 24 hours (vercel.com/docs/analytics/limits-and-pricing). Hobby has no custom events and pauses collection at 50,000 monthly events; Pro charges $0.03 per 1,000 events, and UTM needs the $10/month Web Analytics Plus add-on.

How to choose the right tool

Pick your analytics tool based on the retention window, event limits, and server data you need six months from now, not just day-one pageviews.

• Free tiers vs paid plans: Free tiers usually restrict retention or features: Cabin keeps 30 days, Simple Analytics 1 month with a badge, and Umami Cloud 6 months on 1 site. For multi-site support, funnel analytics and UTM reporting without a monthly bill, Clicktag gives you 50 sites and 50 goals per site for free.
• Events and funnels: Cloudflare Web Analytics and Vercel's Hobby plan don't track custom events. Clicktag includes browser events (window.tt_event), backend JSON POST events to /events, and 2-to-6-step funnels on every site.
• AI crawlers and AI search traffic: JavaScript trackers never see GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot, because these crawlers don't run JavaScript. Clicktag reads verified AI crawler hits per page from Cloudflare with a read-only token, next to referrer traffic from chatgpt.com, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot.
• Self-hosting, replays and revenue: Clicktag is hosted, so there is nothing to install or update. To run the server yourself, GoatCounter is open source; Swetrix Plus, Rybbit Pro and Umami Business add session replays, and Fathom tracks revenue.

FAQ

Does Clicktag really have no paid plan?

Yes, every Clicktag feature is free with no credit card required. One account can track up to 50 websites, with up to 50 goals or funnels and up to 25 email report recipients per site.

How does Clicktag count returning visitors without cookies?

For daily unique visitors, Clicktag hashes the request with a daily salt that is deleted shortly after the UTC day ends, so visits cannot be linked across days. For weekly retention cohorts, it uses a once-a-day return check through the browser's HTTP cache; private windows and cleared caches count as new browsers.

Can I track custom events and button clicks in Clicktag?

Yes, from the browser with window.tt_event(name, metadata, callback) or from a server with a JSON POST to /events. The latest.js script does not record outbound clicks, file downloads or form submissions on its own. Metadata (up to 4,096 characters) can't be grouped or filtered, so put values you want to compare into the event name.

What metrics and features does Clicktag leave out?

Clicktag does not report bounce rate, and utm_term and utm_content are not report dimensions. It also does not offer session recordings, heatmaps, A/B tests, ecommerce revenue tracking, Google Analytics imports, white labeling, or self-hosting.

How does Clicktag verify AI crawlers without storing IP addresses?

Clicktag reads a Cloudflare-proxied site's requests with a read-only token every 15 minutes. A hit counts as verified when Cloudflare verified the bot or the IP is in a range the bot's company publishes, such as OpenAI's or Google's. IPs are checked during the sync and never stored.