Plausible

Google Analytics without the guilt. Plausible gives you pageviews, referrers, and traffic sources in a single dashboard — no cookies, no tracking scripts that slow your site, no GDPR consent banners needed. The entire tracking script is 1KB.

Umami is the closest OSS alternative — similar philosophy, runs on Node.js (vs Plausible's Elixir), and has a more generous free self-hosted tier. Matomo is the full-featured alternative with event tracking and funnels but heavier to run. Fathom is the commercial privacy-focused option.

For indie hackers who need "how much traffic did my launch get" without drowning in Google's 47 dashboard tabs, Plausible is perfect. The hosted plan starts at $9/month, or self-host for free if you can run Docker.

The catch: AGPL-3.0, so self-hosting modifications must be open sourced. Plausible is intentionally limited — no funnels, no cohorts, no user-level tracking. If you need conversion analytics or product analytics, you'll outgrow it fast. The Elixir/ClickHouse stack is powerful but exotic — self-hosting requires more expertise than Umami's Node/Postgres setup.