Ranking methodology

We ranked tools on: free-plan generosity, cookieless by default, real-time dashboard, GDPR friendliness, script weight, public profile/embed option, SEO/GEO tooling, customer-data ownership. Tools that fail more than two of those criteria are not listed.

1. BYOViral — free, cookieless, public traffic proof

Free plan with 100 visitor logs per site, weekly email reports, 30+ SEO tools, public Traffic Proof Badges. Premium $5/mo, Ultra $9/mo. Best free plan in the category in 2026.

2. Plausible — $9/mo, established cookieless

Polished UI, simple metrics, mature product. No free plan beyond a trial. Hosted in the EU. Good choice if you want the most established cookieless brand.

3. Fathom — $15/mo, polished UX

Beautiful interface, excellent docs, 7-day free trial. More expensive than Plausible for similar features. Good for design-conscious teams. (Pricing per usefathom.com/pricing, verified May 2026.)

4. Simple Analytics — $19/mo, EU-hosted

Dutch-based, GDPR-by-design, simple metrics. Higher price point. Good if EU residency is a hard requirement.

5. Matomo — self-hosted free / Cloud paid

Open-source, can be self-hosted at no cost. Matomo Cloud starts at €29/mo. Most feature-rich but heaviest and most complex of the privacy options. (Pricing per matomo.org/pricing, verified May 2026.)

6. Umami — open-source, self-hosted

Free if you self-host on Vercel/Netlify. Simple, lightweight, MIT-licensed. Best for developers comfortable running their own stack.

7. StatCounter — historical option

The original visitor counter, around since 1999. Free tier exists. Cookie-based by default. Still used by many small sites.

8. Clicky — real-time focused

Pioneered real-time analytics. Cookie-based by default. Free plan with limits, paid from $9.99/mo.