Plausible vs Umami: Which One Is Right for Your Website Analytics?

If you are looking for a website analytics tool that provides actionable insights and a simple dashboard while also prioritising user privacy, Plausible and Umami are likely on your short list.

Both tools present a modern approach to analytics, focusing on simplicity and ethical data collection. However, they are not the same.

Their differences in data structures, implementation, and business model can significantly impact which one suits your specific website.

This guide breaks down the major differences between Plausible vs Umami, including their approach to data handling, user interface design, and the total cost of ownership.

Continue reading to determine which solution best suits your specific operational needs, resources, and technical comfort level.

What is Plausible?

Plausible is a privacy-first, open-source web analytics tool designed as a simple and ethical alternative to Google Analytics.

It focuses on providing essential website insights without compromising user privacy or site performance.

Made and hosted in the EU, Plausible operates on a subscription model and offers both a cloud and self-hosted version.

Key Features of Plausible

• Privacy-Focused: Plausible’s selling point is its privacy-first analytics approach. It does not use cookies or collect any personal data, making it fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR regulations. All data is anonymized and stored in the EU, eliminating the need for intrusive cookie banners.
• Essential Metrics: It tracks page views, unique visitors, referral sources, device types, and countries. You can segment your audience by any metric you click on and create custom events to track conversions and attribution.
• Goal Conversions: Plausible supports tracking for outbound link clicks, file downloads, 404 errors, and custom events without complex setup.
• Shareable Dashboards: It allows users to make analytics public or share them privately with team members. Dashboards can also be embedded into websites.
• Google Analytics Import: It enables smooth migration from Google Analytics by importing historical data.
• Search Console Integration: Directly view Google Search Console data within the Plausible dashboard with real-time updates and an entry pages report.

Pros of Plausible Analytics

• Performance: According to Plausible, their tracking script is 75 times smaller than Google Analytics. This adds minimal load time (~1 KB) to your site, improving performance and reducing bandwidth usage.
• Tech Stack: Plausible utilizes Elixir, a functional language renowned for its concurrency capabilities, along with ClickHouse for analytics data storage. ClickHouse is built specifically for fast analytics queries, meaning performance excels as data grows massively.
• Ease of Use: The dashboard is very user-friendly. All key metrics are on a single page, making it easy for anyone to understand their traffic at a glance.
• Focused Feature Set: It includes features like funnel analysis, revenue and goal tracking without being too complicated. Dashboards and reports are also simplified by removing stats that are not collected.
• Transparency and Ownership: As an open-source platform, Plausible allows users to inspect its code for security and privacy assurances. Users retain full ownership of their data, which is never sold or shared with third parties.

Cons of Plausible Analytics

• Limited Customization: The dashboard is simple but not highly customizable. You cannot create entirely new custom reports or change the layout significantly.
• Self-Hosting Complexity: Plausible’s ClickHouse backend is ideal for large-scale analytical queries, but it consumes more server RAM, which is a cost consideration for self-hosting. It also has a more complex initial user setup process that requires email verification.
• API Limitations: The powerful Stats API, which allows users to view historical and real-time stats, is not available in the self-hosted version, only for cloud subscribers.
• Cost for High-Traffic Sites: While the price is reasonable for small sites, it scales with page views and may become expensive for sites with millions of monthly visitors.

What is Umami?

Umami is an open-source website analytics software that offers meaningful insights into your website’s traffic while respecting the privacy of your visitors.

It is a modern, lightweight solution that provides a more focused analytics experience, making it easy to track, analyze, and understand your website data and user behavior.

Key Features of Umami

• Essential Metrics: Umami tracks the basics such as page views, unique visitors, top pages, referral sources, devices, browsers, and location.
• No Cookies: Like Plausible, Umami does not use cookies and does not collect any personal data from your visitors, making it compliant with data privacy laws.
• Lightweight Tracker: The tracking script is very small (~2 KB), which means it won’t slow down your website. This improves user experience and can help with SEO.
• Customizable Dashboards: You can create multiple dashboards and customize them with the specific metrics you want to see for different websites or campaigns. You can also share your stats with others through a secure URL.
• Self-Hosting: You can install Umami on your own server for full control, or use their managed cloud service for convenience.

Pros of Umami

• True Cost Advantage: The self-hosted version is essentially free besides server costs. This is a massive advantage over paid services, especially for high-traffic sites.
• Tech Stack and Performance: Umami uses a React/Next.js stack with PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is a general-purpose database that is less resource-intensive for smaller setups. This stack is very accessible for web developers.
• Self-Hosting Flexibility: It’s easier to set up and allows you to rename the script and API endpoint to bypass ad blockers.
• City-Level Geographic Data: In self-hosted mode, Umami can collect geographic data down to the city level, whereas Plausible self-hosted is limited to the country level.

Cons of Umami

• Limited Features: It lacks features such as automatic event capture, heatmaps, session recordings, goal conversions, and advanced behavioral tracking. Compared to Plausible, the self-hosted version requires more work to get to the same level of functionality.
• Slow Performance for High-Traffic Sites: Umami stores analytics data on Postgres so you can expect a smaller server resource usage, but it may not handle massive traffic volumes as efficiently as Plausible’s ClickHouse backend, resulting in slower query performance.
• Limited Support: If you self-host and something breaks, you can’t just call support. You have to rely on community forums and documentation to solve your problems.

Vemetric: A Umami and Plausible Alternative

If you’re looking for a modern, open-source, privacy-focused analytics tool, Vemetric is a great alternative to Plausible and Umami.

It combines web and product analytics in a single dashboard to help you understand the complete user journey without compromising user privacy or data ownership.

Vemetric is also fully GDPR compliant, hosted on EU servers, and includes optional cookie support for consented users, providing flexibility for regions with strict consent laws.

It is an ideal solution for both marketers and product teams, offering features like funnel analysis, user journey mapping, interactive heatmaps, and event streams for deep insights.

Which One to Choose: Plausible vs Umami vs Vemetric?

The right choice depends entirely on your technical comfort, feature requirements, and budget.

Choose Plausible if:

• You need a simple, hosted solution for basic web analytics.
• Your priority is ease of use and compliance without complex setup.
• You run a blog, small business, or content site and don’t require advanced user behavior tracking.

Choose Umami if:

• You prefer self-hosting for full control and ownership of your data.
• You need advanced features like cohort analysis and user journey mapping without extra cost.
• You want to customize your setup and don’t mind managing your own infrastructure.

Choose Vemetric If:

• You need a unified view of web and product analytics.
• You want privacy-friendly funnel analysis and user journey tracking without using multiple tools.
• You value transparent pricing and a simple setup process.

Final Words

There is no single “best” tool because, at the end of the day, any of them would likely meet your requirements.

Choose the tool that best fits your criteria for privacy, feature set, budget, and technical resources.

If you like this article, don’t forget to check out our guides on:

• Plausible vs Matomo
• Umami vs Matomo
• Plausible vs Google Analytics

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