Open-source alternatives to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is free, powerful and everywhere. So why would anyone switch?

Three reasons come up again and again. The cookie banner: Google Analytics sets cookies, so in the UK you need visitors' consent before it runs, which means a banner and a chunk of visitors who never say yes. Privacy: your visitors' data goes to Google, which uses data for its own purposes. Simplicity: Google Analytics 4 is complicated, and most small businesses only want to know how many people visited, where they came from and what they looked at.

In 2026, UK law made the open-source alternatives even more attractive. Under the ICO's guidance, analytics used only to count visits and improve your site, run by you or by a provider acting only for you, doesn't need prior consent, as long as you tell people and give them a simple way to opt out. Self-hosted tools fit that neatly. Google Analytics generally doesn't, because Google isn't acting only for you.

Hands-on: Umami

Umami is the one I recommend for most small business sites.

• Light and simple. The tracking script is a couple of kilobytes, and the dashboard shows the things people actually look at: visitors, pages, where they came from, devices and countries.
• No cookies. It counts visits without storing anything on the visitor's device.
• More than the basics. The free version includes goals, funnels, events and revenue tracking, and recent versions have added heatmaps and session replay.
• Easy to run. A Node app with a PostgreSQL database, and very actively developed, with new releases most months.

If you want to rely on the no-consent rule, leave session replay switched off: recording individual visits goes beyond counting them.

Hands-on: Matomo

Matomo is the closest thing to Google Analytics, without Google.

• The deepest features: goals, events, campaigns, e-commerce, real-time visitors and a full reporting API.
• Built for many sites. Unlimited websites, with per-site permissions, which makes it a strong choice for agencies giving each client their own login.
• Bring your history. An official, free importer brings in data from Google Analytics, so you don't lose years of reports.
• Cookies are on by default, but can be switched off with a single setting, at the cost of slightly less accurate returning-visitor numbers.
• Some extras are paid, such as heatmaps, funnels, form analytics and A/B testing, sold as yearly plugins.

It runs on PHP and MySQL, and for a typical small business site needs a modest server. Very busy sites need some tuning.

Hands-on: Plausible Community Edition

Plausible is famous for its single, beautifully simple dashboard, and it uses no cookies or local storage at all.

The self-hosted Community Edition is a little heavier to run than Umami (it needs a ClickHouse database and at least 2 GB of memory), it is released only about twice a year, and some features, such as funnels and e-commerce revenue, are only in the paid cloud version. It is a lovely tool, but for self-hosting I usually prefer Umami.

Umami is the one I reach for first. It's light, simple and cookieless, and it runs in one small container. For most small business websites, that's all you need. If you need goals, funnels and e-commerce reports, go for Matomo.

The UK angle

• Usually no cookie banner. Self-hosted, cookieless analytics used only to improve your site can rely on the ICO's statistical purposes exception. You still need to mention it in your privacy notice and offer a simple opt-out, but no banner and no lost data from people clicking "reject".
• Data stays in the UK, on a server you control, rather than going to Google.
• You own the numbers. No limits on how long you keep your data, and nobody else using it.
• UK GDPR still applies. IP addresses count as personal data even when they're scrambled, so these tools still belong in your privacy notice.

Honest drawbacks

• No link to Google Ads. If you rely on Google Ads conversion tracking and audiences, you will still need Google's tools for that part.
• Fewer bells and whistles. If your marketing team lives in GA4's explorations and audiences, Umami and Plausible will feel basic. Matomo comes closest.
• Someone has to run it. Updates, backups and a server that copes with your traffic.
• Your old data stays in Google unless you use Matomo's importer, or Plausible's (which needs some Google set-up).

Sources

• ICO: exceptions to the consent rule, including statistical purposes
• ICO: final storage and access technologies guidance published
• Umami documentation
• Umami releases
• Matomo requirements
• Matomo: importing from Google Analytics
• Matomo: tracking without cookies
• Plausible Community Edition
• Plausible: self-hosted vs cloud