Why analytics belongs on a privacy compliance site
Most website owners add Google Analytics, then discover they need a cookie consent banner because GA4 sets cookies and processes personal data. They then need a GDPR-compliant data processing agreement with Google, geo-targeting rules on their banner, and ongoing maintenance as regulations change.
Plausible eliminates this chain entirely. Because it collects no personal data and sets no cookies, it falls outside the scope of GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive for most use cases. You get your traffic data without adding compliance overhead to get it.
That makes Plausible not just an analytics tool — it’s a compliance decision.
What Plausible actually collects
This is the core of the product. Plausible counts visits using a daily hash of the visitor’s IP address, user agent, and a random salt that rotates every 24 hours. The original IP address is never stored. The hash cannot be reversed. No cookie is set. No fingerprint persists beyond the day.
What you get per visit:
- Page URL visited
- Referrer source (where they came from)
- Browser type and version (aggregated)
- Operating system (aggregated)
- Device type (desktop / mobile / tablet)
- Country and region (from IP, which is then discarded)
- Whether the visit is a bounce
- Time on page (for non-bounces)
What Plausible does not collect: individual user identities, cross-session tracking, cross-site tracking, persistent cookies, or any data that could identify a specific person.
The compliance case: no consent banner required
Under GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, a cookie consent banner is required when you set non-essential cookies or process personal data for tracking purposes. Plausible does neither.
Plausible has confirmed with data protection authorities in the EU that their methodology does not constitute personal data processing under GDPR. Multiple DPAs have independently reviewed the approach. The result: you can run Plausible without a consent banner and without a data processing agreement.
Plausible vs Google Analytics 4
| Plausible | Google Analytics 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies set | ✓ None | ✗ Yes (_ga, _gid) |
| Consent banner needed | ✓ No | ✗ Yes (EU/UK) |
| DPA with provider | ✓ Not required | ✗ Required |
| Personal data collected | ✓ None | ✗ Yes |
| Data stored in EU | ✓ Yes (Germany & Belgium) | ✗ US by default |
| Script size | ✓ <1KB | ✗ ~45KB |
| Dashboard setup time | ✓ <5 minutes | ✗ Hours |
| Ad audience building | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Deep event tracking | Limited | ✓ Extensive |
| Free tier | 30-day trial only | ✓ Free |
| Starting price | $9/mo | Free |
Pricing
| Plan | Price (annual) | Monthly pageviews | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $9/mo | 10,000 | Unlimited |
| Growth | $19/mo | 100,000 | Unlimited |
| Business | $29/mo | 200,000 | Unlimited |
| Enterprise | Custom | 1M+ | Unlimited |
All plans include unlimited websites — one subscription covers your entire portfolio. Pricing scales purely by pageview volume. A 30-day free trial is available with no credit card required. Annual billing saves ~17% over monthly.
Key features
One-screen dashboard
Everything Plausible shows fits on a single page: top sources, top pages, visitor countries, devices, and goal conversions. There are no configuration menus, no event schemas to design, no reports to build. You paste the script, and in 30 seconds you have a working dashboard. For most content sites and small businesses, this covers 95% of what you actually look at.
Goal and conversion tracking
You can track custom events (button clicks, form submissions, file downloads, outbound link clicks) without writing custom JavaScript — just add a CSS class to the element and Plausible picks it up automatically. Revenue tracking is available for e-commerce use cases. Funnel analysis is included on paid plans.
Traffic spike notifications
Plausible sends email or Slack notifications when your site hits unusual traffic levels. Useful for catching viral moments or detecting bot traffic without having to check the dashboard manually.
Public dashboards
You can make your analytics dashboard public with a shareable link — a common practice among privacy-focused companies to demonstrate transparency. The PrivacyComply site itself could publish its dashboard as a trust signal.
Open source and self-hostable
Plausible is fully open source under the AGPL licence. You can self-host on your own server for free if you have the technical capacity. The cloud version starts at $9/month and includes hosting, updates, and support from the Plausible team (two founders, fully bootstrapped and profitable).
Import from Google Analytics
You can import historical data from Universal Analytics and GA4 so your Plausible dashboard shows continuity from before you switched. The import is one-click from the settings panel.
What we liked
- No consent banner needed. The most important feature for this site’s audience — you can add analytics without triggering a new compliance obligation.
- Under 1KB script. Plausible’s tracking script is smaller than a typical image. It has zero impact on Core Web Vitals or Lighthouse scores.
- Unlimited sites on all plans. Agencies and multi-site operators pay once, not per domain.
- EU infrastructure. Data is stored in Germany and Belgium, never transferred to the US. Relevant for strict GDPR interpretations around data transfers.
- Bootstrapped and profitable. No VC pressure, no growth-at-all-costs incentive to monetise your visitors’ data. The business model is subscriptions, full stop.
- 30-day free trial, no card required. Low-friction way to validate it works for your site before committing.
Where it falls short
- No free tier. Google Analytics is free. Plausible starts at $9/month after the trial. For very small hobby sites, this matters.
- No ad audience integration. If you run Google Ads or Meta Ads and rely on audience building from analytics data, Plausible cannot replace GA4 for that use case.
- Limited depth on user journeys. You can’t replay sessions, build cohorts, or trace individual conversion paths. If you need that level of analysis, you need a different tool (and a consent banner to go with it).
- No real-time data. The dashboard refreshes periodically rather than showing live second-by-second data. Fine for most use cases, frustrating during live events.
Who Plausible is for
- Any website that wants analytics without triggering a cookie consent requirement
- Content sites, blogs, and publisher sites where pageviews, referrers, and top content is sufficient
- SaaS landing pages that need conversion tracking without GA4’s complexity
- Agencies managing multiple client sites — unlimited domains on one subscription
- Developers and technical founders who appreciate open-source, self-hostable tools
- Any business in a regulated industry (healthcare, legal, finance) that wants to minimise personal data processing
Who should look elsewhere
- Businesses running Google Ads who need conversion audiences built from analytics data — stay on GA4 with a proper consent banner
- E-commerce operations needing deep funnel analysis, session replay, or A/B testing at scale
- Very small hobby sites not willing to pay $9/month — Cloudflare Analytics offers a free cookie-free alternative (though with less detail)
The verdict
Plausible earns a 4.8/5 for solving a real problem elegantly: you need to know if your website is working, and you shouldn’t have to build a compliance stack just to find out. The script is tiny, the dashboard is instant, EU data residency is built in, and the consent banner question simply doesn’t arise.
The only reason it’s not 5/5 is the lack of a free tier and the hard limit on ad audience use cases. For the audience reading this site — people who care about getting compliance right — Plausible is almost always the right analytics choice.
Try Plausible free for 30 days
Add the script, get your dashboard in under 5 minutes. No credit card required. Unlimited websites on all plans.