Free alternatives to GoatCounter
GoatCounter does one thing, count pageviews, and does it in the smallest footprint of any tool here. That is the appeal, and also the reason people move on. There are no events, funnels, or conversion tracking, the hosted service runs on what the author calls reasonable public usage with no published number and a pricing help page that is currently a dead link (as of July 2026), and it is a single-person project. If you want a little more capability, or a company you can count on, without giving up the privacy or the simplicity, here is where to look.
Facts checked as of July 2026Read our GoatCounter review
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Umami
Best Free Alternative ToGoatCounterGoatCounter's simplicity and privacy, plus the events, funnels, and free hosted plan it leaves out, with a company behind it
Umami is the natural step up from GoatCounter without losing what you liked about it. It stays cookieless and keeps to a single-page dashboard of visitors, referrers, pages, and countries, but it adds custom events and funnels GoatCounter does not have. Both routes are free (as of July 2026): the Cloud Hobby plan costs nothing permanently, and the app is MIT licensed so you can self-host on your own Postgres server. You also get a small company and steadier footing than a one-person project.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Open source (MIT)
United States- Best for:
- GoatCounter users who want a bit more capability and a company behind the tool
- The catch:
- Umami does not publish its Cloud event allowance anywhere machine-readable, so confirm the current Hobby limit before you point a busy site at it.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: Adds custom events and funnels, which GoatCounter does not do
- Advantage: Also cookieless, so the consent banner stays gone
- Advantage: A permanent free hosted plan from a company, versus GoatCounter's donation-funded reasonable-use terms
- Advantage: Backed by a small company rather than a one-person project
- Advantage: Light session replay and heatmaps GoatCounter has never offered
- Tradeoff: Self-hosts on Node and Postgres, heavier than GoatCounter's single Go binary
The polished, established version of the same minimalist idea, free if you self-host
Plausible is what GoatCounter looks like with more design polish and a company that has been at it since 2018. Same cookieless, single-page approach and a sub-1 KB script, with goals and campaign tracking on top. The money is the thing to watch: Plausible Cloud has no free plan, only a 30-day trial and then $9 per month billed annually (as of July 2026), so free means self-hosting the AGPL Community Edition. If GoatCounter's solo-project feel worried you but you still want minimal and private, this is the established option.
- From $9/month (as of July 2026)
- Estonia
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)
Estonia- Best for:
- GoatCounter users who want an established company and a more refined dashboard
- The catch:
- Plausible Cloud has no free tier, and self-hosting the free edition needs both PostgreSQL and ClickHouse.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: More polished dashboard and an established company since 2018
- Advantage: Also cookieless, so no consent banner
- Advantage: Adds goals and campaign tracking GoatCounter lacks
- Advantage: Published pricing, versus GoatCounter's undefined reasonable-use terms
- Tradeoff: No free hosted plan, where GoatCounter's hosted service is free
- Tradeoff: Self-hosting needs Postgres and ClickHouse, against GoatCounter's single binary on SQLite
A generous free hosted tier and the real events, funnels, and replay GoatCounter never had
If you outgrew GoatCounter because a pageview count stopped being enough, PostHog is the far end of that. Event analytics, funnels, retention, session replay, and feature flags, with a free tier of 1 million events, 5,000 web session replays, and 1 million feature flag requests a month, no card required (as of July 2026). It is a much bigger tool than GoatCounter, which is the point and also the cost.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Open source (MIT (with a proprietary ee/ directory))
- Best for:
- Teams who left GoatCounter because they actually needed events and funnels
- The catch:
- It is a heavy product-analytics suite with a real learning curve, it uses cookies, and one noisy autocapture setting can spend a million events in a week.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: Full event analytics, funnels, and retention GoatCounter does not do
- Advantage: Session replay and feature flags on top
- Advantage: Generous free hosted tier with published limits
- Tradeoff: Far heavier and harder to learn than GoatCounter's single number
- Tradeoff: Uses cookies, so it brings back the consent banner GoatCounter avoids
- Tradeoff: Events can overspend into a bill, unlike GoatCounter's flat free hosting
The closest minimalist peer, even stricter on privacy with no IP logging, and pay-what-you-want
Counter.dev is GoatCounter's nearest neighbour: just as small, just as private, and free in the same practical way. It goes a step further on privacy by logging no IP addresses at all, resolving visitor country at the Cloudflare edge, and it runs on a pay-what-you-want model with no quotas. The code is AGPL-3.0 with a separate self-hosting repo. Be honest with yourself though, because it shares GoatCounter's main weakness: it is a thinly funded solo project.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- Germany
- Open source (AGPL-3.0)
Germany- Best for:
- GoatCounter users who liked the size but wanted the strictest possible privacy
- The catch:
- It is hobby-scale by the author's own figures (€350 in donations across 26 payments in 2022), so do not make it load-bearing for a business.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: Logs no IP addresses at all, going further than GoatCounter on privacy
- Advantage: Also cookieless and free, on a pay-what-you-want model
- Worth knowing: AGPL-3.0 with a self-hosting repo, like GoatCounter's open self-host
- Worth knowing: Also has no events or funnels, so it does not close that gap
- Tradeoff: Also a thinly funded solo project, so not the reliability upgrade some readers want
- Tradeoff: No published data retention policy
Full, ownable analytics depth for GoatCounter users who outgrew a pageview count entirely
Matomo is the opposite of GoatCounter in scope: goals, funnels, ecommerce revenue, visitor-level logs, session recordings, and heatmaps. The self-hosted On-Premise edition is GPL-3.0 and free with unlimited hits and unlimited users, and it installs on ordinary PHP and MySQL hosting. It is a lot more than a visitor counter, so pick it only if that extra depth is genuinely what sent you looking.
- From €29/month (as of July 2026)
- New Zealand
- Open source (GPL-3.0)
New Zealand- Best for:
- GoatCounter users who need real analytics depth and will run a server
- The catch:
- Free means administering a PHP and MySQL server, Matomo Cloud has no free tier and starts at €29 per month, and it meters hits, not pageviews.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: Goals, funnels, ecommerce revenue, and visitor logs GoatCounter has none of
- Advantage: Session recordings and heatmaps built in
- Advantage: Self-hosted is free and unlimited, like GoatCounter's self-host
- Tradeoff: Far heavier to run and read than a single Go binary
- Tradeoff: Cloud has no free tier, where GoatCounter's hosted service is free
- Tradeoff: Meters hits, so events and downloads count too, not just pageviews
Free forever session replay and heatmaps, the why behind GoatCounter's visitor numbers
Clarity answers a different question than GoatCounter. Where GoatCounter counts how many people came, Clarity shows what they did: session recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, and automated rage-click flags, free forever with no traffic limit and no paid tier (as of July 2026). Most people run it next to a counter like GoatCounter rather than instead of it, because the two cover different halves.
- Completely free (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Best for:
- GoatCounter users who want to see why a page underperforms, run alongside it
- The catch:
- It uses cookies so the consent banner returns, recordings last only 30 days, and Microsoft receives your visitors' behavioral data.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: Session recordings and heatmaps, which GoatCounter does not do
- Advantage: Free forever with no traffic limit and a clearly free status
- Worth knowing: Pairs with GoatCounter rather than replacing it
- Tradeoff: No traffic, referrer, or acquisition reporting like GoatCounter's
- Tradeoff: Uses cookies, undoing GoatCounter's banner-free setup
- Tradeoff: Behavioral data goes to Microsoft, against GoatCounter's privacy model
Free hosted at any volume with the deepest reporting, if you can accept cookies GoatCounter avoids
GA4 is the tool most GoatCounter users were happy to leave, so treat this as the honest step back. It earns a place for one reason: it is free hosted at any traffic level and does far more, including Google Ads and Search Console integration and free BigQuery export, none of which GoatCounter offers. The price is exactly what GoatCounter removed.
- Free plan (as of July 2026)
- United States
- Best for:
- GoatCounter users who turn out to need Google Ads attribution or deep free reporting
- The catch:
- It uses cookies and needs a consent banner and GDPR handling, its interface is complex, and explorations sample above 10 million events per query.
Compared to GoatCounter
- Advantage: Free hosted at any volume with a clearly free status
- Advantage: Goals, funnels, audiences, and Google Ads integration GoatCounter lacks
- Advantage: Free BigQuery export for raw data
- Tradeoff: Uses cookies and needs the consent banner GoatCounter avoids
- Tradeoff: Far more complex than GoatCounter's single page
- Tradeoff: Explorations sample above 10M events per query and retention caps at 14 months
How to choose
Start with Umami if you want GoatCounter's simplicity plus events, funnels, and a free hosted plan with a company behind it. If you would rather stay this minimal and just want a more established name, Plausible is the polished version, free if you self-host. Go to PostHog only if the missing events and funnels were the real reason you left, and to Matomo if you need full depth you can own. Counter.dev is the honest sideways move if you liked GoatCounter's size but wanted stricter privacy, though it is just as thinly funded.