Plausible vs Umami
Plausible and Umami compared as cookieless, privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives: cloud pricing at 1M and 10M events, free tiers, licences, self-hosting stacks, funnels, revenue and session replay, with current 2026 plans.
Quick Answer
Umami is the better value for most developers: MIT-licensed, a free cloud tier with 100k events a month, Pro at $20 for 1M events, and funnels, revenue and session replay even when self-hosted. Plausible is the pick if you want a polished, managed service on EU-owned infrastructure in Germany with stronger bot filtering, and you are fine paying more per pageview and having funnels and revenue only on its Business plan and above.
Last updated October 19, 2026. Uses Plausible's current Starter/Growth/Business volume price table and Community Edition comparison, and Umami's October 2026 Hobby/Pro/Business Cloud plans, overage rates and self-hosting docs.
| Feature | Plausible | Umami |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 (Community Edition) | MIT |
| Free Cloud Option | 30-day trial only, no card required | Hobby: 100k events/month, 1 website, 6-month retention |
| Entry Paid Plan | Starter $9/month (10k pageviews, 1 site) | Pro $20/month (1M events, up to 20 websites) |
| Cloud Price at 1M / month | $69 Starter / $104 Growth / $139 Business | $20 (Pro) |
| Cloud Price at 10M / month | $169 Starter / $254 Growth / $339 Business | $200 (Business); Pro with overage would be $290 |
| What Counts Toward Usage | Pageviews + custom events across a team | Pageviews + custom events + stored event properties |
| Going Over the Limit | No fees; upgrade requested after 2 consecutive months over | $0.00003/event (Pro), $0.00002/event (Business); collection continues |
| Data Retention (Cloud) | 3 years (Starter/Growth), 5 years (Business) | 6 months / 2 years / 5 years (Hobby / Pro / Business) |
| Funnels | Business plan and up; not in CE | Yes, Cloud and self-hosted |
| Revenue Tracking | Business plan and up; not in CE | Yes, revenue report |
| Session Replay / Heatmaps | Business Cloud (5,000 replays incl.); self-hosted v3.1+ / v3.2+ | |
| SSO | Enterprise only | Enterprise (SAML) |
| Self-Hosting Stack | Docker Compose with ClickHouse; 2 GB RAM, SSE 4.2/NEON CPU | Node.js 18.18+ and PostgreSQL 12.14+, or Docker |
| Cloud Data Location | EU-owned infrastructure in Germany | Not stated on Umami's site |
Plausible
Lightweight, cookieless web analytics with a hosted cloud on EU-owned infrastructure in Germany and an AGPL-licensed self-hosted Community Edition.
Pros
- Cookieless by design: a daily rotating salt hashes domain, IP and User-Agent, and raw IPs and User-Agents are never stored
- Cloud data stays on EU-owned infrastructure in Germany, which simplifies conversations with EU legal teams
- Cloud bot filtering excludes about 32K data-centre IP ranges by default
- Forgiving overage policy: no surprise fees, and you are only asked to upgrade after two consecutive months over
- Yearly billing is 10× the monthly price (two months free)
- Google Analytics import and email/Slack reports from the cheapest plan
Cons
- No free cloud plan, only a 30-day trial; Starter starts at $9/month for 10k pageviews and 1 site
- Funnels, ecommerce revenue, custom properties and the Stats API need the Business plan
- Community Edition lacks funnels, user journeys, revenue goals, SSO and the Sites API, and ships only twice a year
- Noticeably more expensive at volume: $139/month on Business at 1M and $339 at 10M
- Self-hosting runs ClickHouse, which needs 2 GB RAM and an SSE 4.2 or NEON CPU
Best For
Teams that want a managed, EU-hosted analytics service with minimal upkeep and are happy to pay a premium for it.
Umami
Open-source, cookieless web analytics under the MIT licence, self-hostable on Node.js and PostgreSQL, with a hosted Umami Cloud that includes a free tier.
Pros
- MIT licence, the most permissive of the two, and self-hosting is free
- Free Hobby cloud plan: 100k events a month for one website
- Much cheaper at volume: Pro is $20 for 1M events, Business $200 for 10M
- Self-hosted gets almost every feature: funnels, journeys, retention, revenue, attribution, session replay (v3.1+) and heatmaps (v3.2+)
- Simple self-hosting stack: Node.js 18.18+ and PostgreSQL 12.14+, or the prebuilt Docker image
- Data collection never stops when you exceed your plan; overage is billed per event
Cons
- Stored event properties count toward usage on top of pageviews and custom events, so heavy instrumentation raises the bill
- Hobby keeps data for only 6 months, and Pro for 2 years
- Email reports are Cloud-only, and teams, API and MCP access on Cloud start at Pro
- Umami's site does not say where Cloud data is stored, unlike Plausible's explicit Germany hosting
- SAML SSO is Enterprise-only
Best For
Developers and indie hackers who want privacy-friendly analytics cheaply, especially if they self-host or run many sites.
Cloud pricing at real traffic levels
Both bill on roughly the same unit, but Plausible charges several times more per event. Plausible's usage is the total of pageviews and custom events across all sites in a team, and pageview goals do not count. Prices step by volume. At 10k a month, Starter, Growth and Business cost $9, $14 and $19. At 100k they are $19, $29 and $39; at 1M, $69, $104 and $139; at 10M, $169, $254 and $339. Yearly billing is ten times the monthly price. Umami counts each pageview as one event, plus custom events and stored event properties. Hobby is free for 100k events, Pro is $20 for 1M with overage at $0.00003 per event, and Business is $200 for 10M with overage at $0.00002. Worked through: a SaaS marketing site with 1M pageviews and events a month pays $20 on Umami Pro and $69 on Plausible Starter, or $139 if it needs Plausible's funnels on Business. At 10M, Umami Business is $200 and Plausible Business $339. At 2M, Umami Pro is $20 plus 1M × $0.00003, or $50, while Plausible Starter is $89. The catch on Umami is event properties: if you attach several properties to every event, usage grows faster than raw pageviews suggest, so check the usage counter after instrumenting.
What happens when you go over
Neither product drops your data on a traffic spike, but they handle overage differently, and that changes how you budget. Plausible does not charge overage at all. If you exceed your tier for one month, nothing happens beyond a notice in Account Settings. After two consecutive months over, you are asked to upgrade, pro-rated. If you do not upgrade within a week, dashboards are locked, though stats keep being collected in the background, and they unlock at the next billing cycle once you are back within limits, or immediately when you upgrade. That makes a viral launch week free, but sustained growth forces a tier change. Umami bills overage per event on Pro and Business and states that data collection will not be interrupted and no data is lost. Your bill tracks your traffic linearly, which is cheaper than a tier jump when you are just over a boundary, but a sustained spike shows up on the invoice the same month. For predictable budgets with occasional spikes, Plausible's policy is friendlier. For steady growth, Umami's per-event overage is usually cheaper, and once Pro overage passes about $180 a month, which happens around 7M events, Business at $200 becomes the better deal.
Self-hosting: licences, stacks and missing features
Both can be self-hosted for free, but the self-hosted experiences are not equivalent. Umami is MIT-licensed. A self-hosted instance needs Node.js 18.18 or newer and PostgreSQL 12.14 or newer, or you can use Docker Compose, which bundles PostgreSQL, or the prebuilt image with your own database. Umami's docs say Cloud and self-hosted share the same analytics features. Email reports are the only Cloud-only feature, MCP is included from v3.4 (disabled by default), and session replays and heatmaps arrive in self-hosted v3.1 and v3.2. Plausible Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, which matters if you modify it and offer it to others as a network service. It runs with Docker Compose and ClickHouse, and the README asks for at least 2 GB RAM and a CPU with SSE 4.2 or NEON. Plausible deliberately keeps marketing funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO and the Sites API out of CE to fund the project, releases CE twice a year, and offers community support only. CE also uses basic User-Agent and referrer-spam bot filtering instead of the cloud's data-centre IP blocklist. For a small VPS, Umami's Postgres stack is lighter to run than ClickHouse, and you lose almost nothing by self-hosting it.
Privacy model and where data lives
Both are built to avoid cookies, and both pitch dropping the cookie banner, but they document their approach differently. Plausible publishes exactly how it counts unique visitors: a daily identifier from hashing a daily salt with the website domain, IP address and User-Agent. The salt is rotated and deleted every 24 hours, so visitors cannot be tracked across days, and raw IP addresses and User-Agents are never stored. Plausible says it uses no cookies, browser cache or local storage, and that you do not need cookie banners or consent for its analytics. Cloud data stays on EU-owned infrastructure in Germany. Umami says it works without cookies and never collects personal data, so most sites can drop the cookie banner, and that this supports GDPR, CCPA and PECR obligations. Its site does not say where Umami Cloud stores data. If data residency is a hard requirement, self-hosting Umami in the region you choose solves it; otherwise ask Umami before signing a DPA. Neither vendor's claim replaces your own legal review, but Plausible's more detailed public documentation and explicit German hosting make it the easier sell to a cautious EU compliance team.
Verdict
Choose Umami if you want privacy-friendly analytics at the lowest cost or plan to self-host: it is MIT-licensed, has a free 100k-event cloud tier, costs $20 a month for 1M events against Plausible's $69 to $139, and its self-hosted build includes funnels, revenue, session replay and heatmaps. Choose Plausible if you want a managed service with data on EU-owned infrastructure in Germany, stronger default bot filtering and a forgiving overage policy, and you value that over price. If you self-host, Umami is the clearer pick: Plausible's Community Edition omits funnels, revenue goals and SSO and updates twice a year. If you need funnels on Plausible Cloud, budget for the Business plan.