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 E-Commerce Marketing Lead
Runs marketing for a Shopware shop selling outdoor gear in Germany and Austria, with a monthly ad budget split between Google, Meta and two price comparison sites. Since the consent banner went live, a third of the orders no longer show a source. Wants revenue per campaign that matches the shop backend, a checkout funnel that shows where carts are left, conversions sent back to the ad platforms, and numbers that hold without a click on "accept".
Plausible Analytics
This judge's pick
Simple Analytics
Criterion by criterion
Traffic, sources & campaign reports
Plausible Analytics
Pages, entry and exit pages, sources, referrers, UTM tags and channels with automatic grouping for Paid Search and Affiliates, countries through to cities, devices and browsers, a real-time view refreshing every 30 seconds, saved personal and site segments with combinable filters, annotations, a consolidated dashboard across my sites, weekly or monthly email reports and Search Console data beside the traffic. That covers nearly everything I need to judge my Google and price-comparison spend. We found no public information on custom dashboards or report builders, or on ad-platform cost data shown beside the traffic.
Simple Analytics
Campaign reporting is the strong suit: UTM sources, mediums, campaigns and content appear in the dashboard, clicking a UTM source drills into devices, browsers and countries, and filters cover country, referrer, UTM and device type, with annotations, saved filtered views, weekly or monthly email reports and a live-stats embed. We found no public information on date comparisons, configurable channel grouping, roll-up reporting across several sites, or ad platform and Search Console data shown beside the traffic.
Goals, events, funnels & e-commerce
Plausible Analytics
Pageview goals without code changes, custom events with properties, automatic tracking of outbound links, file downloads, form submissions, 404s and scroll depth, plus funnels of 2–8 steps in sequential, flexible or strict modes with per-step drop-off — even counting a Stripe checkout detour as the same session — and revenue goals with total revenue, average order value, multi-currency support and attribution by campaign, landing page, country and device, including a WooCommerce revenue plugin and a Shopify guide. For my checkout funnel this is close to what I run reports for. We found no public information on cohorts and retention, on comparing several attribution models, or on conversions being sent back to Google Ads or Meta server to server — and the Google Analytics import comes in only as day-level aggregates, so historical order data arrives flattened.
Simple Analytics
Custom events with metadata via sa event, automated outbound clicks, emails and downloads, goals built on events and multi-step funnels with per-step drop-off are documented, which would cover a signup or checkout flow. For a shop like mine, though, we found no public information on order and revenue tracking, plugins for named shop systems such as Shopware, attribution models, cohorts and retention, or conversions sent back to Google Ads and Meta server to server.
Consent-free operation & data minimisation
Plausible Analytics
No cookies, no persistent identifiers, no cross-site or cross-device tracking, and visitors counted through a published daily hash of salt, website domain, IP address and User-Agent, with the salt rotated and deleted every 24 hours and raw IPs and User-Agents never stored. The no-banner position is stated against named law (GDPR, PECR, CCPA) and backed by an independent legal assessment of consent-free analytics on the basis of legitimate interest, with data pseudonymised on arrival and anonymised within 24 hours. We found no public information on ready-made wording for my privacy policy or per-data-type retention settings — but this is the reason I would sign: my numbers stop depending on a click on accept.
Simple Analytics
This is the core pitch and it is documented in depth: no cookies or browser storage, IP addresses dropped rather than hashed, no fingerprinting, no cross-site or cross-device tracking, the session-counting method published, and the consent-free position argued against named law including the German TTDSG, PECR and ePrivacy Article 5(3). The collection scripts are open source and the stored fields are listed; we found no public information on a named authority recognising the mode or an external legal opinion, and SOC 2 is only listed as in progress.
Data access, export & self-hosting
Plausible Analytics
The customer retains full ownership of the website data, a Stats API covers reporting while an Events API covers collection, dashboard reports export as CSV (top 300 entries per report, top 100 for pages), a site-settings export is reimportable into another Plausible site, Google Analytics 4 history can be imported, and Enterprise plans deliver daily raw event data to my own S3-compatible storage. The Community Edition is AGPL-licensed and runs on my own server, though its documented feature set omits funnels, user journeys, e-commerce revenue goals, SSO and the Sites API, so parity is partial. Deletion after subscription lapse is documented, with an export window before the dashboards are removed.
Simple Analytics
Raw pageviews and events are exportable in CSV, JSON and Parquet through an export API, with Looker Studio, Power BI and CloudQuery connectors, a Google Analytics historical import, customer ownership stated in their terms, and deletion of visitor data on account closure after a 90-day backup window. We found no public information on a self-hosted or on-premise edition, and the export API requires a plan that includes it without the fact stating which plans those are.
Installation, integrations & performance
Plausible Analytics
A snippet goes into the head, the script is documented as 54 times smaller than Google Analytics with 135KB less JavaScript per visitor, and official routes exist for WordPress including WooCommerce revenue tracking, Shopify, a Google Tag Manager template, NPM, single-page-app frameworks and mobile SDKs such as Android, Flutter and Swift. Server-side tracking via the events API, a first-party script proxy to get past ad blockers, view-only and full-access team roles, single sign-on on Enterprise, an installation testing tool and a public status page showing 99.99% uptime over 90 days make this a solid operational package. We found no public information on a Shopware or TYPO3 plugin, so for my Shopware shop it is the manual snippet.
Simple Analytics
Installation is a single async script stated at under 5 KB with a light version, a WordPress plugin, a Google Tag Manager template, guides for React, Vue, Next.js and other frameworks, automatic pageviews in single-page apps, a first-party proxy and own subdomain to get past ad blockers, plus a setup wizard and browser testing on real devices. We found no public information on a Shopware or Shopify plugin, mobile SDKs, team roles and permissions, single sign-on, or a public status page with uptime history.
European sovereignty
Plausible Analytics
Plausible Insights OÜ, incorporated in Estonia with registration number and VAT ID published, is the contracting entity; visitor data is processed and stored in the EU only on EU-owned infrastructure — Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany, Bunny in Slovenia for CDN, UpCloud in Finland for databases — and the subprocessor list with locations is public alongside a data processing agreement in force automatically for all customers. An AGPL self-hosted edition documented to run on my own server keeps every visitor record in my own chain. Independent confirmation of entity, ownership and residency beyond the vendor's own pages was not available, and we found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications, so I stop one step short of the top marks.
Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics B.V. is registered in the Netherlands, the analytics infrastructure is named and EU-based (Hetzner in Germany, Leaseweb and Worldstream in the Netherlands, primary infrastructure in the Netherlands), a subprocessor list with locations is published, and they state visitor data never leaves the EU apart from opt-in features like the AI assistant. The chain still runs through US companies for payments, code hosting and email reports (Stripe, GitHub, Mailgun's parent, legacy DigitalOcean), SOC 2 is only in progress, and 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 at €9 /month up to 10k monthly pageviews with one site, Growth at €14 /month with three sites and three team members, Business at €19 /month with ten sites, funnels, e-commerce revenue attribution and the Stats API, Enterprise as contact us, yearly billing with 2 months free, a 30-day trial without credit card, and a free self-hosted Community Edition with community support only. The feature-to-plan mapping is public (funnels and the Stats API on Business, raw event exports and SSO on Enterprise). We found no public information on what happens when traffic exceeds a tier, on VAT treatment or a minimum term, and Enterprise is a sales conversation — so I cannot compute my real annual cost at my traffic level from these pages alone.
Simple Analytics
The free plan's limits (1 user, 5 websites, 1 month history), the €20 /month paid tier, +€20/mo per extra user, usage-based billing on data points with a three-month average, overage handling by email notice with one week before an automatic upgrade, annual billing at 2 months free and cancel-anytime terms are all public. Enterprise is custom-quoted, we found no public information on VAT treatment of the prices, and the export API is only described as requiring a plan that includes it.
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.