Web Analytics Services Compared: 10 Options for 2026

The right web analytics service depends on one question: do you need page-level traffic numbers, or user-level product behavior? For traffic, Google Analytics 4 and Cloudflare Web Analytics are free, and Plausible, Fathom and Umami are simple, cookie-free paid options. For funnels, retention and per-user events, look at PostHog or Mixpanel. Adobe Analytics is for enterprises with a sales contract.

Below is a website analytics comparison of ten services, with pricing taken from each vendor's own page in October 2026. Prices change often, so check the linked page before you commit.

Quick comparison

Service	Type	Free option	Paid from (as of Oct 2026)	Cookies	Self-host
Google Analytics 4	Traffic + events	Yes, free	Analytics 360: sales quote	Yes	No
Adobe Analytics	Enterprise suite	No	Sales quote	Yes	No
Mixpanel	Product analytics	1M events/month	Growth: usage-based, first 1M events free	Configurable	No
PostHog	Product + web analytics, replay	1M events/month, 5K recordings	Usage-based after free tier	Configurable	Yes (hobby)
Plausible	Privacy-first traffic	30-day trial	$9/month (10k pageviews)	No	Yes (Community Edition)
Fathom	Privacy-first traffic	7-day trial	$15/month (100k pageviews)	No	No
Umami	Privacy-first traffic	Hobby: 100K events/month, 1 site	Pro: $20/month	No	Yes, free
Matomo	Full GA-style suite	On-Premise: free	Cloud: about €22/month (50,000 hits)	Optional	Yes, free
Cloudflare Web Analytics	Basic traffic	Yes, free	n/a	No	No
Vercel Web Analytics	Traffic for Vercel apps	Hobby: 50,000 events/month	Pro: $0.03 per 1K events	No	No

"Cookies: No" means the vendor says its default script sets no cookies. Whether you need a consent banner also depends on your jurisdiction and what else your site collects, so check with whoever handles your privacy compliance.

How to choose: four questions

1. Traffic or product behavior? "How many visitors, from where, to which pages" is traffic analytics. "Which users finished onboarding and came back on day 7" is product analytics. Product tools can do traffic too, but traffic tools can't do per-user funnels.
2. Do you need to avoid a cookie banner? Plausible, Fathom, Umami, Cloudflare and Vercel are built to work without cookies. GA4 sets cookies by default, so in the EU and UK it normally sits behind consent.
3. Who owns the data? If data must stay on your servers, self-host Matomo, Plausible Community Edition, Umami or PostHog.
4. How will the bill grow? Pageview-priced tools (Plausible, Fathom) are predictable. Event-priced tools (Mixpanel, PostHog, Vercel) grow with every tracked click, so decide what to track before you add track() calls everywhere.

The services in detail

Google Analytics 4

GA4 is free and the default choice for marketing teams, mainly because it connects to Google Ads and Search Console. Everything is an event. Pageviews, scrolls and outbound clicks are collected automatically with Enhanced Measurement.

The limits catch people out. In the standard (free) version, event data retention is 2 or 14 months, explorations are sampled above 10 million events per query, and the BigQuery daily export is capped at 1 million events (Google's 360 vs standard table). The default retention is 2 months, so change it to 14 months in Admin > Data collection and modification > Data retention on day one. Analytics 360 raises the limits (up to 50 months of retention, for example) but is sold through a sales contract.

Good for: marketing sites, ad-funded traffic, teams already in Google's ecosystem. Weak at: simple dashboards, privacy-sensitive audiences.

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is an enterprise product sold with Adobe Experience Cloud, alongside Customer Journey Analytics. Pricing isn't published, and you book a demo to get a quote. It makes sense when you already run Adobe's marketing stack and have analysts to configure it. It's rarely a fit for startups or developer tools.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is event-based product analytics: funnels, retention, flows and cohorts. As of October 2026 the free plan covers up to 1M events per month without a credit card. The Growth plan keeps the first 1M events free and charges by volume after that (Mixpanel shows the price with a calculator rather than a flat rate).

Good for: SaaS and apps that care about activation and retention. You need to plan an event schema up front. Random event names quickly make reports useless.

PostHog

PostHog bundles product analytics, web analytics, session replay, feature flags, A/B tests and more. As of October 2026, its pricing page lists 1M analytics events and 5,000 session recordings free each month. After that, analytics costs $0.00005 per anonymous event and $0.000198 per identified event at the first paid tier. It's open source and can be self-hosted for small volumes.

Good for: engineering-led teams who want one tool instead of five. It's a lot of product, so start with web analytics and replay before turning on everything.

Plausible

Plausible is a lightweight, cookie-free traffic dashboard: visitors, pages, sources, countries, devices, goals. Cloud plans start at $9/month for the Starter tier (10k monthly pageviews), with a 30-day free trial. Plausible Community Edition is free to self-host under AGPLv3, but it's released twice a year and leaves out cloud-only features like funnels, ecommerce revenue goals and SSO (details).

Fathom

Fathom is similar in spirit to Plausible: a one-page dashboard and no cookies. It starts at $15/month for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews, with a 7-day trial and no free plan. Hosted only.

Umami

Umami is open source and free to self-host. Umami Cloud's Hobby plan is free for up to 100K events a month on 1 website with 6 months of retention, and Pro starts at $20/month. It's a good fit for developers who want Plausible-style simplicity and are happy to run a small Node.js app and a database. DevHunt has a Plausible vs Umami comparison if you're deciding between the two.

Matomo

Matomo is the closest open-source match to the old Universal Analytics: goals, ecommerce, heatmaps (paid plugin), tag manager. Matomo On-Premise is free with unlimited users and hits. Matomo Cloud starts at about €22/month for 50,000 hits (the price shown varies by region). You can run it without cookies, but some features work better with them.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

Free, and it works without moving your DNS to Cloudflare: you add a JavaScript snippet. Cloudflare says it uses no cookies or localStorage and doesn't fingerprint visitors. You get pageviews, referrers, countries and Core Web Vitals, but no custom events or funnels. It's a solid zero-cost baseline for a docs site or blog.

Vercel Web Analytics

If you deploy on Vercel, Web Analytics is a toggle plus a package. Hobby includes 50,000 events a month, after which collection pauses. Pro has no included events and charges $0.03 per 1,000 events, with a 12-month reporting window. Custom events need Pro. It's convenient, but it only covers sites hosted on Vercel.

Setting one up: a worked example with Plausible

Most privacy-first services install the same way. Using Plausible as the example:

1. Create a site in the dashboard with your domain.
2. Add the script tag it gives you to the <head> of every page. In Next.js, put it in the root layout.
3. Load your site and confirm the visit appears in the real-time view.
4. Add goals for the actions that matter, such as signups or "Copy install command" clicks.
5. Exclude your own visits (each service documents a way, usually a localStorage flag or a browser extension).

Run two services side by side for a few weeks if you're migrating. Numbers will differ noticeably, because each tool handles ad blockers, bots and sessions differently. Compare trends, not absolute totals.

Common mistakes

• Tracking everything. Event-based bills grow with every listener. Track the 5-10 actions you'll actually make decisions on.
• Leaving GA4 retention at 2 months. Year-over-year explorations become impossible.
• Comparing raw totals across tools. Ad blockers block many analytics scripts. Developer audiences block more than most, so expect lower numbers from client-side scripts on developer sites.
• No naming convention. Pick object_action (for example signup_completed) before the first event ships.

For a broader list of options, browse analytics tools on DevHunt or the free alternatives to Google Analytics and to Mixpanel. New to the topic? Start with Web analytics 101.

FAQ

What is the best free web analytics service?

For traffic only, Google Analytics 4 and Cloudflare Web Analytics are both free. Cloudflare is simpler and cookie-free, while GA4 is more powerful. If you can self-host, Matomo On-Premise, Plausible Community Edition and Umami are free open-source options. For product analytics, Mixpanel and PostHog both have free tiers of 1M events a month (as of October 2026).

Which web analytics services don't use cookies?

Plausible, Fathom, Umami, Cloudflare Web Analytics and Vercel Web Analytics all work without cookies by default. Matomo can be configured to run cookie-less. GA4 uses first-party cookies by default.

What's the difference between web analytics and product analytics?

Web analytics measures traffic: visitors, pageviews, sources and pages. Product analytics tracks what identified users do over time (funnels, retention, cohorts) and is event-based. GA4 sits in between. Mixpanel and PostHog are product analytics tools that also cover basic traffic.

Is Google Analytics 4 really free?

Yes, the standard version is free. The paid tier, Analytics 360, raises limits such as data retention (up to 50 months instead of 14), sampling thresholds and BigQuery export volume. Google sells it through a sales contract.

Can I self-host web analytics?

Yes. Matomo On-Premise, Plausible Community Edition and Umami are free to self-host, and PostHog has a self-hosted option for smaller volumes. You take on running the server, backups and upgrades yourself.