Self-Hosted Analytics: Google Analytics Alternatives

TL:DR: Umami is the best self-hosted analytics pick for most small teams in 2026: one Node app, one PostgreSQL database, no licence fee, and a working dashboard in an afternoon. Plausible Community Edition is the better-looking runner-up, free under AGPL, but it drops funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals and SSO, and it ships twice a year as a long-term release. Matomo is the only self-hosted tool with the full enterprise checklist, and its premium bundles start at €230 a month on top of your own server. Every self-hosted option trades a subscription for work you now own: upgrades, backups, uptime and bot filtering.

Google Analytics 4 is the reason this category exists. It is free, it is enormous, and it answers a question you did not ask while hiding the one you did. The consent banner exists because the tool sets identifiers, and the dashboard exists because a product team needed somewhere to put every setting.

Self-hosted analytics is the other trade. You keep the tracking script and the database on a server you control, you stop paying per pageview, and you accept the server as yours to patch.

What "self-hosted analytics" actually means in 2026

Self-hosted analytics means the collection endpoint and the database run on infrastructure you control, and the vendor ships code rather than hosting. That covers two different products, and the difference matters more than the marketing.

The first family is genuine open source: Umami under MIT, Plausible Community Edition under AGPL-3.0, the Matomo core under GPL-3.0, GoatCounter under an open licence. You run it and pay nobody a licence fee. The second is commercial software with a self-host option attached, and the option is often narrower than the pricing page suggests. Swetrix lists on-premise installation only on its Enterprise tier, and Fathom's current product is hosted only, with an older open-source build, Fathom Lite, maintained as a legacy edition.

Four criteria separate them: licence and real cost, including the server and your evenings; install footprint, meaning runtime, database, reverse proxy and TLS; feature parity, meaning funnels, events, revenue and retention; and maintenance load, meaning release cadence, bot filtering and who gets paged at 2am.

Self-hosting does not make you compliant by itself. It makes you the data controller, which is a promotion in responsibility rather than an exemption.

Prices above were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 9 November 2026.

Option 1: Umami, the one-container install most teams should start with

Umami is the pragmatic default because its requirements are boring. The self-hosted install needs Node.js 20.19 or newer, with 22 LTS recommended, and a PostgreSQL database at 12.14 or above, per Umami's installation docs. The repository ships a Docker Compose file that starts the app and a PostgreSQL database together, and there is a prebuilt image at docker.umami.is if you would rather point it at a database you already run.

Two details catch people. The first boot creates an admin account with the username admin and the password umami, and the docs tell you to change it immediately. The app listens on port 3000, so it needs a reverse proxy, and the docs recommend a process manager such as PM2.

Umami Cloud's free Hobby plan covers 100,000 events a month on one website with six months of retention. Pro is $20 a month for 1 million events, 20 websites and up to 10 team members, with extra events at $0.00003 each, and Business is $200 a month for 10 million events and unlimited sites, per Umami's pricing page.

Pick Umami if you want a small, MIT-licensed tool you can understand in an hour and run on the cheapest VPS you already own. Skip it if you need revenue attribution or funnel analysis deep enough to argue with a finance team.

Option 2: Plausible CE, the best dashboard with the shortest feature list

Plausible's self-hosted edition is free and honest about what it leaves out. Plausible Community Edition is the AGPL-licensed release you run yourself, and Plausible's own comparison states that marketing funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO and the sites API are not available in CE, that bot filtering is basic rather than advanced, that releases are long-term and published twice a year, and that support is community only, per Plausible's self-hosted page.

The install is heavier than Umami's. The community edition repository requires Docker and Docker Compose, a CPU with SSE 4.2 or NEON support for ClickHouse, and at least 2GB of RAM, plus a BASE_URL and a SECRET_KEY_BASE of 64 bytes or more. You also need DNS pointed at the box so the compose override can issue a Let's Encrypt certificate.

What you get for that is the cleanest dashboard in the category and a price ladder that makes the cloud option easy to compare. Plausible Cloud starts at $9 a month for 10,000 monthly pageviews on Starter, $14 on Growth and $19 on Business, rising to $19, $29 and $39 at 100,000 pageviews, with a 30-day free trial and no card required, per the pricing block on Plausible's homepage.

Pick Plausible CE if the dashboard is what your client or your co-founder will actually open, and you can live without funnels. Skip it if you need revenue goals, SSO, or a release cadence faster than twice a year.

Option 3: Matomo, the only self-hosted tool with the enterprise checklist

Matomo is the option that survives a procurement review. The on-premise core is free and GPL-3.0, and the paid part is the plugin bundles: Team from €230 a month billed annually, Business from €1,209 a month, and Enterprise from €2,834 a month, with monthly billing at €275, €1,450 and €3,400 respectively, per Matomo's pricing page. Matomo Cloud is separate and starts at €22 a month excluding tax for 50,000 hits.

The requirements are the ones a hosting provider will recognise. Matomo 6.0.0 needs PHP 8.1 or newer with the pdo and pdo_mysql extensions, and MySQL 8.0 or newer, or MariaDB 10.6 or newer, per Matomo's requirements page. Above one million actions a month, Matomo recommends splitting the database and the web tier onto two servers.

That is the trade. Matomo does cohorts, funnels, heatmaps, session recording, A/B testing and roll-up reporting, and it asks you to run PHP, tune MySQL and buy a bundle for the features your board asks about. For a regulated client that needs the feature list on paper, that is cheap.

Pick Matomo if you need the deepest feature set and you have someone who can run a LAMP stack. Skip it if you want analytics to be a single container you forget about.

Option 4: Fathom, the honest cloud-only answer

Fathom does not pretend to be self-hostable, and that clarity is worth something. Current Fathom is a hosted product priced by pageviews: $15 a month for 100,000, $25 for 200,000, $45 for 500,000, $60 for 1 million and $100 for 2 million, with 50 sites included on every plan and no free tier, per Fathom's pricing page. There is a 7-day trial and a card is required.

The self-hosted route exists only as Fathom Lite, which the project describes as a previous and open-source version of Fathom Analytics, MIT licensed, still maintained for bugs but no longer receiving features, per the Fathom Lite repository. Fathom's own comparison is blunt about the gap: Lite uses cookies and has no API, custom events, ecommerce tracking, UTMs or EU isolation.

Pick Fathom if you want privacy-friendly analytics and zero server work at $15 a month.

Option 5: Swetrix and GoatCounter, the two edge cases

Swetrix is the feature-dense option with no free cloud plan. Standard starts at £15 a month plus VAT for 100,000 monthly events, Plus at £29 adds session replays, feature flags and A/B testing, and the 14-day trial requires a payment method, per Swetrix's pricing page. Its FAQ states that the open-source Community Edition is the free route, and on-premise installation is listed on the Enterprise tier.

GoatCounter is the opposite extreme. The hosted service is free for reasonable public usage and funded by donations, the software is open source, and self-hosting means running a statically compiled binary whose only dependency is SQLite or a PostgreSQL connection, per the GoatCounter repository. The tracking script adds about 3.5KB, it identifies unique visits without cookies, and the interface is built with screen readers in mind.

Pick Swetrix for replays, flags and experiments in one privacy-first tool. Pick GoatCounter if your site is small, your budget is zero and you want the smallest possible install.

How to choose, the decision tree

• If you want the shortest path to a working dashboard, self-host Umami: two services, one database, no licence.
• If a client will look at the screen and you can live without funnels, run Plausible CE and take the nicer UI.
• If procurement needs cohorts, heatmaps, A/B testing and a support contract, buy Matomo and budget for the bundle plus a server.
• If you do not want a server at all, pay Fathom $15 a month.
• If you want session replay without a third-party tracker, pay Swetrix and use its cloud rather than the Enterprise on-prem tier.
• If the site is a personal project or a small charity site, GoatCounter on a $5 VPS covers it.
• If you already run Docker on a VPS, adding one of these is a compose file, not a migration.

The realistic answer for most readers is Umami self-hosted, with Plausible Cloud at $9 a month as the escape hatch when the server becomes a chore.

Integrating with the rest of your stack

Analytics that nobody joins to anything is a vanity dashboard. The useful pattern is to keep the tracking data next to the systems it explains: the CRM that holds the pipeline, the invoicing tool that holds the money, and the project board that holds the delivery dates.

Self-hosting helps here because the boundaries are yours. A self-hosted tool exposes its own database or an API, so you can pull pageviews into the same Postgres instance that backs your CRM, or schedule a nightly export into a spreadsheet your accountant already trusts. That is the argument in the data ownership guide for solopreneurs, and it is why the minimalist analytics comparison keeps returning to the same shortlist.

The infrastructure side is a solved problem if you already self-host. This Hetzner self-hosting guide covers running several small apps on one box with Coolify, which is the same shape as running analytics plus a CRM plus invoicing. For the hosted side of the same decision, the 2026 analytics comparison for freelancers covers the paid options.

Where the wiring gets custom is the join between traffic and revenue. A pageview table and a deal table rarely share a key, and the report a founder wants, which campaign produced which client, is usually a small script rather than a feature. That is the kind of build BareStack's custom work covers, and you can compare the open-source and hosted shapes at the comparison page. If you are weighing whether to run the server yourself, the BareStack FAQ answers the backup and update questions first.

Bottom line

Umami is the best self-hosted analytics tool for most small teams in 2026: MIT licensed, one Node process, one PostgreSQL database, and no per-pageview bill. Plausible CE is the runner-up if the dashboard matters more than funnels, Matomo is the only option that satisfies an enterprise feature checklist, and GoatCounter is the cheapest thing that works. Choose based on the feature you cannot lose, then accept the maintenance that comes with owning the database.

FAQ

Is self-hosted analytics free?

The software is free in most cases, and the running cost is not zero. Umami is MIT licensed, Plausible CE is AGPL, and the Matomo core is GPL, so no vendor charges a licence fee, per Plausible's self-hosted comparison. You still pay for the server, backups and the hours spent on upgrades, and Matomo charges for premium plugin bundles on top of the free core.

What server do I need to run self-hosted analytics?

It depends on the tool. Umami needs Node.js 20.19 or newer plus PostgreSQL 12.14 or newer, per Umami's install docs, while Plausible CE needs Docker, ClickHouse and at least 2GB of RAM, per its repository. Matomo runs on PHP 8.1 or newer with MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6, per Matomo's requirements.

Is self-hosted analytics GDPR compliant?

Self-hosting changes who is responsible, not whether you are compliant. Cookieless tools that do not store personal identifiers, such as Plausible, Umami and GoatCounter, are designed to run without a consent banner, but once you host the data you are the controller and you own retention, access and deletion. A server in the EU helps with transfer questions and does not replace a privacy notice.

Umami or Plausible: which is better self-hosted?

Umami is the easier install and Plausible has the better interface. Umami needs one Node app and PostgreSQL, while Plausible CE needs Docker, ClickHouse and 2GB of RAM. Plausible CE also withholds funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals and SSO, so if those matter, Umami is the better value.

Can you self-host Google Analytics?

No. Google Analytics 4 is a closed hosted product with no self-hosted edition, and the tracking script sends data to Google's servers. The practical substitutes are the open-source tools in this post, all of which accept a similar one-line script and store the data on your own machine.

How much does Plausible cost if you pay for hosting?

Plausible Cloud starts at $9 a month for 10,000 monthly pageviews on the Starter plan, $14 for Growth and $19 for Business, and the 100,000 pageview tier runs $19, $29 and $39, per Plausible's pricing block. The trial is 30 days and needs no card, and self-hosting the Community Edition costs nothing to Plausible.

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