As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates Plausible Analytics 2.5/5 and Simple Analytics 3/5 in Web Analytics. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick Plausible Analytics and 1 picks Simple Analytics, 1 calls it a tie. Plausible Analytics scores higher on 1 of 7 criteria (Goals, events, funnels & e-commerce). Simple Analytics scores higher on 6 of 7 criteria (Pricing transparency, Consent-free operation & data minimisation, Data access, export & self-hosting, plus 3 more). Provenance — Plausible Analytics: EU-Made; Simple Analytics: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Simple Analytics holds the higher mean on six of seven criteria — consent and privacy 6.7 to 5.7, data ownership 6.3 to 5.5, sovereignty 6.2 to 5.5, pricing transparency 5.0 to 3.8, implementation 5.7 to 5.3, traffic reporting 5.0 to 4.8 — while Plausible Analytics carries the judge leans on six: 4–1 on traffic reporting, conversions and events, and implementation; 3–1 on data ownership and sovereignty; 2–1 with three ties on consent and privacy. Pricing transparency is the one criterion where no judge leans Plausible Analytics (0–2, four ties); its pages price only the 10k monthly pageview band, with Enterprise at 'Contact us'. The weighted totals divide the bench: four favor Plausible Analytics 7.4–8.0 against 6.3–7.0, the skeptic reads it 0 to Simple Analytics' 7.2, and the public-sector bench reads both 0. Both list EU-only data residency and founder-held ownership, with entities in Estonia and the Netherlands.
Choose Plausible Analytics if
You need conversions and events coverage — four judges lean Plausible Analytics there, mean 4.5 to 4.2.
Your team builds on documented APIs and exports and wants a 30-day trial with no credit card — the implementation lean is Plausible Analytics 4 to 1.
Your data protection officer leads procurement — that weighted total reads Plausible Analytics 7.6 to 7, with an automatically applicable data processing agreement and visitor data stated to be processed on servers owned by European companies and never to leave the EU.
Your buying committee resembles the e-commerce lead, agency developer and growth analyst — their totals read 7.5, 8 and 7.4 against 6.3, 6.8 and 6.7.
Choose Simple Analytics if
You need published prices beyond an entry band before signing — pricing transparency means 5.0 to 3.8, no judge leans Plausible Analytics (0–2 with four ties), and its pages price only the 10k monthly pageview band with Enterprise at 'Contact us'.
Your reviewer scores like the skeptic bench — its weighted total reads Simple Analytics 7.2 to Plausible Analytics 0.
You need a consent-free position argued against named law — Simple Analytics cites ePrivacy Article 5(3), Germany's TTDSG and the UK PECR, drops IP addresses rather than storing or hashing them, and its consent and privacy mean reads 6.7 to 5.7 (leans split 2–1 with three ties).
Your contracting requires a Dutch entity — jurisdiction is listed as the Netherlands — noting that the captured pages give different figures for the contracting entity.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Agency Developer
Lead developer at a twelve-person web agency that runs forty client sites on WordPress and TYPO3 and a few Shopify shops. Installs the analytics once per site and answers for it for years. Wants a small script or server-side collection, a plugin per CMS, an own tracking domain so ad blockers do not cut the numbers in half, client accounts with their own logins, and a price that does not jump when one client goes viral.
Plausible Analytics
This judge's pick
Simple Analytics
Criterion by criterion
Traffic, sources & campaign reports
Plausible Analytics
The standard reports cover pages, entry and exit pages, sources, channels, UTM tags, countries, devices and a real-time view refreshing every 30 seconds, with saved segments, filters across all reports, weekly and monthly email reports to unlimited recipients, and password-protectable shared links for clients. Annotations, Search Console data beside the traffic and a consolidated roll-up across sites are also documented. We found no public information on configurable channel grouping or a stated position on report sampling.
Simple Analytics
The documented dashboard covers pageviews, referrers, UTM campaigns with a generator tool, country and device breakdowns, filters across reports, weekly or monthly email reports, shared and public dashboards, even annotations on charts, and the session-counting method is published. I found no public information on roll-up reporting across several sites, custom segments or a report builder, and that roll-up gap matters when running forty client sites from one login.
Goals, events, funnels & e-commerce
Plausible Analytics
Pageview goals need no code, outbound links, downloads, form submissions, scroll depth and 404s are measured automatically, and custom events carry properties. Funnels run two to eight steps with per-step drop-off and three strictness modes, revenue attaches to goals with WooCommerce and Shopify integrations plus attribution by source and campaign, and user journeys are documented. We found no public information on product-level e-commerce reports, cohorts and retention, or conversions passed back to Google Ads or Meta.
Simple Analytics
Custom events via a documented function, automated tracking of outbound clicks, emails and downloads, goals built on those events and multi-step funnels with drop-off are all documented. I found no public information on e-commerce tracking of orders and revenue, cohorts, or sending conversions back to ad platforms, which is the gap for our Shopify clients.
Consent-free operation & data minimisation
Plausible Analytics
No cookies and no persistent identifiers, with the counting method published down to the formula: a daily salted hash of IP and User-Agent, the salt deleted every 24 hours, and raw IP and User-Agent never stored. An independent legal assessment backs the consent-free position on legitimate interest, the code is open source for inspection, and the data policy documents which fields are kept. We found no public information on recognition by a named authority or retention settings per data type.
Simple Analytics
The consent-free position is argued against named law — ePrivacy Article 5(3), the German TTDSG, the UK PECR and the GDPR — with IP addresses dropped rather than hashed, no identifiers ever created, the collection script open source and the stored fields listed field by field. A Do Not Track setting exists and they will still sign a customer-provided agreement; I found no cited audit or legal opinion, with SOC 2 only stated as in progress.
Data access, export & self-hosting
Plausible Analytics
A documented stats API for reporting, an events API for server-side collection, dashboard CSV exports, a site export that re-imports into another Plausible site, GA4 history import and Enterprise daily raw event exports to S3-compatible storage cover our data needs. The Community Edition is AGPL-licensed with an install guide for our own servers, though the captured pages state it is published without funnels, user journeys, e-commerce revenue goals, SSO and the sites API, and dashboard CSVs hold the top 300 entries per report. Deletion on cancellation with a final export window is documented.
Simple Analytics
A stats API, a raw export API and an admin API, raw exports from CSV to Parquet with field selection, a Google Analytics historical import, connectors for Looker Studio, Power BI and CloudQuery warehouses, customer ownership written into their terms, and deletion of data within 90 days of account deletion. The export API requires a plan that includes it, and I found no public information on a self-hosted edition.
Installation, integrations & performance
Plausible Analytics
The script is stated at 54 times smaller than Google Analytics, a server-side events API exists, the official WordPress plugin handles WooCommerce revenue tracking, in-dashboard stats and proxy mode, and Shopify, GTM, automatic SPA routing and mobile SDKs are documented. First-party script proxying to bypass ad blockers, a status page showing 99.99 percent uptime over the last 90 days and view-only versus full-access team roles round it out. We found no public information on a TYPO3 guide, agency white-label or SLA terms, and community plugins are explicitly not maintained by the vendor.
Simple Analytics
Parts of this are exactly my checklist: an official WordPress plugin, a GTM container, automatic pageviews in single-page apps, server-side events from a backend, a script under 5 KB with a light version, and an own subdomain or custom domain to survive ad blockers, with help offered on proxies. I found no public information on TYPO3 or Shopify plugins, mobile SDKs, single sign-on, granular roles or a public status page, and each extra user is a separate monthly charge.
European sovereignty
Plausible Analytics
The contracting entity is Plausible Insights OÜ in Tartu, Estonia, hosting is on Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany with the database on UpCloud in Finland and the CDN on Bunny in Slovenia, and the captured pages state visitor data never leaves the EU. Subprocessors are listed with locations, the DPA applies automatically to all customers, the company is bootstrapped with no outside investors, and the self-hosted edition keeps every visitor record on our own servers. A few optional support and payment subprocessors sit outside the EU, and we found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification.
Simple Analytics
The subprocessor list names every provider with its location and the data it touches, the visitor-data chain sits on named EU infrastructure in the Netherlands and Germany, analytics data is stated never to leave the EU except for opt-in features, and a data processing agreement page exists. SOC 2 is only in progress, payment (Stripe) and support (Zoom, Cal.com) run through US providers and Mailgun has a US parent despite EU-region servers; also the captured pages give different figures for the contracting entity, a B.V. in Amsterdam versus a sole proprietorship in Bussum.
Pricing transparency
Plausible Analytics
Starter is €9 /month up to 10k monthly pageviews, Growth €14 /month with 3 sites and 3 team members, Business €19 /month with 10 sites, funnels, e-commerce revenue attribution and the stats API, yearly billing gives 2 months free, the trial is 30 days without a credit card, and the self-hosted edition charges no fees to the vendor beyond my own server costs. Feature gating per plan is public, but the captured pages show only the prices at the 10k pageview band, so I cannot compute the cost at higher traffic volumes. We found no public information on overage handling, extra-site pricing, minimum term or the Enterprise tier, which is listed as "Custom — Contact us".
Simple Analytics
A free plan with stated limits (one user, five websites, one month of history, unlimited pageviews under fair use), paid at €20 /month, two months free annually, +€20/mo per extra user, overage handled by email notice and automatic upgrade after a week, cancellation at any moment, and payment surcharges stated. How the data-point tiers are priced, what each paid tier includes and the VAT treatment are not in the captured pages, and enterprise pricing is custom quoted.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Plausible Analytics
Simple Analytics
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
Questions about Plausible Analytics and Simple Analytics
Which is better, Plausible Analytics or Simple Analytics?
As of 30 Oct 2026, the panel rates Simple Analytics higher: 3/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 4 of the 6 judges pick Plausible Analytics and 1 picks Simple Analytics, 1 calls it a tie. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Plausible Analytics or Simple Analytics European?
Plausible Analytics is European (EU-Made). Simple Analytics is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Plausible Analytics and Simple Analytics store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Plausible Analytics: Default not stated; pages mention the EU and Germany. Simple Analytics: Default not stated; pages mention the EU.
Do Plausible Analytics and Simple Analytics have a free plan?
As of 30 Oct 2026, Simple Analytics’s own pages state a free plan; Plausible Analytics’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.