Choosing the Right Analytics Tool: An Honest Comparison
The privacy-friendly analytics space has grown quickly. More options means more confusion about which tool is right for which situation. This guide gives you a factual comparison without rankings or marketing language.
What to look for in an analytics tool
Before comparing tools, define what you actually need:
- Privacy posture — does the tool use cookies? Store IP addresses? Set cross-site identifiers?
- Pricing model — per-pageview, per-site, flat-rate, or free with limits?
- Feature depth vs simplicity — do you want a dashboard you can understand in five minutes, or one with deep segmentation?
- Self-hosted vs managed — do you want to control the infrastructure, or pay for the managed service?
- Framework support — does the tool have a native SDK for your stack, or just a generic script?
- Multi-site support — how does pricing scale if you manage five or ten sites?
- Data export — can you get raw data out via CSV or API?
Feature comparison
| Tool | Cookieless | Self-host option | Multi-site | Open source | Next.js SDK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antlytics | Yes | No | Unlimited (Starter) | No | Yes |
| Plausible | Yes | Yes | Varies by plan | Yes (AGPL) | Community |
| Fathom | Yes | No | 50 sites (entry) | No | Community |
| Umami | Yes | Yes (primary) | Unlimited | Yes (MIT) | Community |
| Simple Analytics | Yes | No | Limited | No | Community |
All five tools listed here are cookieless in their default configuration. That means none of them set tracking cookies, and none require a consent banner for analytics tracking in most implementations.
Pricing compared
Pricing models differ significantly across tools. This matters more as your site count grows.
Antlytics — A$10/month (A$60/year billed annually) for unlimited sites with 500,000 pageviews per month included. One site on the Free plan.
Plausible — Pageview-based tiers with per-site pricing. Check plausible.io/pricing for current rates.
Fathom — Per-pageview pricing. Check usefathom.com/pricing for current rates.
Umami — Self-hosted is free (you manage the infrastructure). Umami Cloud has a free tier with limits; check umami.is/pricing.
Simple Analytics — Per-site pricing. Check simpleanalytics.com/pricing for current rates.
The key insight: per-site pricing punishes multi-project developers. If you manage five sites on a per-site plan, you pay five times the base price. Flat-rate plans like Antlytics Starter keep costs predictable as your portfolio grows. See per-site analytics pricing explained for the arithmetic.
Privacy posture differences
All five tools claim to be privacy-friendly, but they differ in implementation:
Cookie usage — All five avoid persistent tracking cookies in default configuration. Verify with your browser's developer tools after installation.
IP address handling — Most tools use IP addresses to derive country and then discard the IP. Confirm this with each tool's documentation.
Data residency — Plausible is EU-hosted by default (a meaningful consideration for European regulatory compliance). Antlytics, Fathom, and Simple Analytics are US/CDN-based. Umami is wherever you host it.
Self-hosted — If you want complete control over your data, Umami and Plausible both offer self-hosted options. Self-hosting means managing servers, updates, and backups yourself.
Where each tool shines
Plausible — Mature product with a large user base, EU data storage, a self-hosted option, and a deep feature set including goals, funnels (paid), and GA import. Well-suited for teams with privacy-conscious EU audiences.
Fathom — Premium feel, import from GA, includes 50 sites, strong customer support. Higher entry price but includes features that cost extra elsewhere.
Umami — Maximum control: self-host on your own infrastructure, unlimited data, no per-pageview limits (hardware permitting). Requires technical setup and maintenance.
Simple Analytics — Focus on simplicity. Dutch company, EU-oriented. Limited advanced features.
Antlytics — Multi-site flat-rate pricing, Next.js-native SDK, and AI coding tool integration (Model Context Protocol server). Best fit for developers managing multiple sites or building with AI tools.
Where each tool has trade-offs
No tool is universally best. Honest trade-offs:
Antlytics — Newer product, smaller community than Plausible, no EU data residency guarantee.
Plausible — Per-site pricing becomes expensive for multi-site portfolios. Growing, but the interface is more complex than some alternatives.
Fathom — Higher entry price. Fewer framework-specific SDKs.
Umami — Self-hosting is genuinely complex: you manage the database, the server, and updates. Not suitable for teams that want a managed service.
Simple Analytics — Fewer advanced features than Plausible or Fathom.
Self-hosted vs managed
Self-hosted analytics (Umami, Plausible Community Edition) gives you complete control over your data. The trade-off is operational burden: servers, backups, updates, uptime.
Managed analytics (Antlytics, Plausible Cloud, Fathom, Simple Analytics) means someone else runs the infrastructure. You pay for convenience and reliability.
For most teams, managed is the right choice. Self-hosting makes sense if you have strict data residency requirements that no managed provider meets, or if you have the engineering capacity to maintain it.
Multi-site economics
| Sites | Antlytics | Plausible | Fathom |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A$10/month | See pricing page | See pricing page |
| 5 | A$10/month | Higher tier (per-site) | See pricing page |
| 10 | A$10/month | Higher tier (per-site) | See pricing page |
Verify current prices at each tool's pricing page — these change over time and the model difference (flat-rate vs per-site) matters more than any specific number.
When to use Google Analytics (honestly)
Google Analytics is still the right tool if you:
- Need Google Ads conversion import or remarketing audiences.
- Use BigQuery for raw event-level data analysis.
- Need cross-device, cross-session user journey tracking.
- Work in an organisation where GA is mandated by stakeholders.
If you mostly look at pageviews, top pages, and referrers in GA, you are already using a privacy-first analytics mindset. You just need a privacy-first tool.
Migration friction: what to expect
Switching analytics tools is usually a script swap: remove the old snippet, add the new one. The main migration challenge is historical data — your new tool starts fresh, with no access to your GA history.
Some tools (Plausible, Fathom) offer Google Analytics import features. Check each tool's current documentation for what's supported.
See the step-by-step migration guide from Google Analytics for a walkthrough.
FAQ
Which tool is best for small sites? Antlytics Free (one site) or Umami self-hosted (free) are good starting points. Most small sites don't need the feature depth of paid plans.
Which is best for agencies? Antlytics Starter (unlimited sites, A$10/month) or Fathom (50 sites, higher entry price). The right choice depends on site count and budget.
Can I run multiple tools in parallel? Yes. Running both GA and a privacy-first tool in parallel during a transition is common practice. Remove GA once you're confident in the new data.
Which tools work with Next.js? Antlytics has a dedicated Next.js SDK. Plausible, Fathom, and Umami have community integrations. All tools work with any framework via a script tag.