Cheapest Privacy-Friendly Analytics Tools in 2026

You've decided to switch away from Google Analytics. Great. Now you're staring at a dozen privacy-first alternatives and trying to figure out which ones fit your budget.

Here's an honest breakdown of what these tools actually cost in February 2026, including free tiers, gotchas, and which ones give you the most for your money.

The Quick Price Table

All of these tools are cookieless (except Matomo, which uses cookies by default but can be configured without them). None of them require a cookie consent banner — except Matomo in some configurations.

The Free Options

If you're running a personal blog or side project and don't want to spend anything, you have real choices.

Counter.dev is completely free and open source. You get basic metrics — visitors, referrers, countries — with no enforced limits. The tradeoff is that it's a solo project funded by donations, with no custom events, funnels, or advanced features. It works well if all you want is a visitor counter.

GoatCounter is free for personal and non-commercial use with no hard pageview cap. It's minimal by design — no tracking of personal data, a clean dashboard, and a script you can actually read (it's intentionally unminified). Commercial sites pay around EUR 5-34/month depending on volume.

Umami Cloud has a Hobby tier that gives you 10K events per month across 3 websites for free. The catch is 6-month data retention — your history disappears after half a year. If you can live with that, it's genuinely useful. Umami is also fully open source, so you can self-host it for free with no limits.

Cabin offers a free plan with unlimited pageviews on one website, but data is only kept for 30 days. It has a unique angle — it measures the carbon footprint of your visitors.

Fairlytics gives you 10K pageviews per month on a free tier with no time limit and no credit card required. It has the smallest tracking script at 510 bytes, and it respects both Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals by default.

Best Value Under $10/Month

If you're willing to spend a bit, three tools stand out at the $9/month price point.

Umami Cloud at $9/month gives you 100K events, 50 websites, 2-year data retention, and unlimited team members. That's a lot of product for the price. If you want to go further, their self-hosted version costs nothing.

Plausible at $9/month gets you 10K pageviews on one site with a polished dashboard, real-time stats, and conversion funnels. It's open source (AGPL) and EU-hosted in Germany. The limitation is that the $9 tier only covers one website — multiple sites bump you to $14/month.

Pirsch starts even lower at $6/month for 10K pageviews and 50 websites. It's a German company with solid features including events, goals, and an API. Prices scale as your traffic grows.

Fairlytics at $9/month (Pro plan) gets you 100K pageviews with goal tracking. The free tier covers 10K views, so you don't pay anything until you outgrow it.

Best Value for Medium Sites (100K+ Views)

Once you're past 100K monthly pageviews, pricing differences become more meaningful.

Fathom at $15/month gives you 100K pageviews across up to 50 sites with permanent data retention. If you run multiple projects, Fathom is hard to beat — 50 sites on the cheapest plan is generous. It's also one of the most polished tools on this list.

Simple Analytics starts at $19/month for 100K datapoints and 10 sites. It's a Dutch company (EU-based) and offers a 50% discount for non-profits. The dashboard is clean but the price is on the higher end for what you get.

Matomo Cloud starts at roughly $26/month (EUR 22) for just 50K hits. It's by far the most expensive option per pageview, but it's also the most feature-rich — heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, and funnels. If you need those features, Matomo is the only privacy-focused option that has them. If you don't, you're overpaying. Note that Matomo's self-hosted version is free, which makes it a strong choice if you're comfortable running your own infrastructure.

The Self-Hosted Escape Hatch

Three tools on this list offer free self-hosting: Umami (MIT license), Matomo (GPL), and Plausible (AGPL). If you have the technical skills and a server, you can run any of these with no pageview limits and no monthly fees.

The tradeoff is maintenance — updates, backups, database scaling, and uptime are your responsibility. For a personal blog that's fine. For a business relying on its analytics, the cloud-hosted version is usually worth the cost.

New Tools Worth Watching

Rybbit launched in 2025 and offers a modern take on privacy analytics with session replays, user journeys, and funnels — features usually reserved for tools like Mixpanel. Plans start at $9/month for 100K pageviews. It's open source and actively developed.

What About Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is free. That's its strongest argument and the main reason it dominates the market. But "free" comes with costs that don't show up on a pricing page: cookie consent banners that hurt conversion rates, legal risk from EU data transfer rules, a 22 KB script that slows down your site, and your visitors' data being used for Google's ad business.

If you're reading this article, you've probably already decided those costs are too high. The good news is that privacy-friendly analytics in 2026 are cheaper and more capable than they've ever been. You can get started for free with several tools, and even the paid options are less than a Netflix subscription.

Want to try the lightest option? Fairlytics is free for up to 10,000 page views/month — 510 bytes, no cookies, no consent banner.