Plausible vs Matomo: A simple, privacy-first alternative
Most people comparing Matomo and Plausible are trying to move away from Google Analytics. Both tools get you there, but they take very different approaches. This page covers how they compare on simplicity, privacy, performance and setup.
Matomo, formerly known as Piwik, was founded in 2007 and is the most well known open source alternative to Google Analytics. Plausible Analytics launched in 2019 and has grown to become a widely used alternative. Let’s look at where they differ.
- What Plausible and Matomo have in common
- Simple web analytics vs complex web analytics
- A lightweight analytics script that is optimized for speed
- No cookies, no consent banner required
- Which tool is right for you?
- Bringing your historical data with you
- Sign up for a free Plausible trial
What Plausible and Matomo have in common
Both tools are open source, with code available on GitHub for anyone to inspect. Both can be self-hosted or used as a cloud service. And with either tool, you own your data completely. It’s not shared with or sold to third parties. That’s where the similarities largely end.
Simple web analytics vs complex web analytics
Matomo is more like a full blown Google Analytics alternative
When you enter your Matomo dashboard, it has that Google Analytics feel in terms of the amount of features, charts and the huge number of metrics and reports you have access to.
There are dozens of individual reports across multiple sections of the navigation menu.
This means that Matomo collects and displays hundreds of different website metrics. For some website owners, all of these metrics and reports might be useful but the majority will probably never look at more than a fraction of them.
Plausible is built with simplicity and ease of use in mind
We built a simple web analytics tool that is focused on the essential website stats and metrics only. You get to see unique visitors, page views and bounce rate for the chosen date or time period. You can see the comparison to the previous period.
You also get to see the most popular pages on your site and the most popular sources of traffic. On top of that, you can see the geographical overview of where your visitors are coming from and the overview of devices, operating systems and browsers that they use.
You can do event and goal conversion tracking too. Simple, easy to understand and quick to review website analytics. We’ve made it easy to open publicly or share your website stats privately with other people such as your visitors or your clients who have no prior experience with analytics.
We have a live demo for you to view. It shows you the live website analytics of our website.
A lightweight analytics script that is optimized for speed
Web analytics scripts like any other website element add extra page weight and extra loading time to your website. Every KB matters when you want to keep your site fast to load.
Plausible Analytics is a lightweight web analytics tool built with speed and performance in mind. Our tracking script is a fraction of the size of Matomo’s, which adds up across every page load, every visitor, every day.
No cookies, no consent banner required
Plausible also collects fewer data points by default. We are built as a privacy-first analytics tool.
Matomo uses cookies and collects personal data by default for reports such as session recordings and heatmaps. That means you need a consent banner, and visitors who decline it won’t be counted at all. Depending on your audience, that’s a significant chunk of traffic you’re simply not seeing.
Plausible doesn’t use any cookies and we don’t collect any personal data so by using Plausible you don’t need to obtain a cookie consent or the GDPR consent at all. Every visitor is counted. You get a more accurate picture of your traffic, not a filtered one.
If you want to run Matomo without a consent banner, Matomo’s own documentation outlines several configuration steps required to strip out personal data collection: things like anonymizing IP addresses, disabling cookies, masking URLs and form inputs, and handling historical data. It’s doable, but it takes work and needs to be maintained over time.
With Plausible, none of that configuration is needed. It works out of the box.
Plausible is also incorporated and hosted in the EU, with all visitor data processed exclusively on European-owned infrastructure. See our EU hosting page for more details.
Which tool is right for you?
If you need heatmaps, session recordings and deep customization and are willing to invest in setup and ongoing maintenance, Matomo may suit you. If you want accurate, privacy-friendly data without the overhead, Plausible is likely the better fit.
Bringing your historical data with you
If you want to keep your historical Matomo data, Plausible supports CSV imports. Matomo’s export format will need some adjustments to match our import template, but it’s doable.
Sign up for a free Plausible trial
Hugging Face, Ghost, Basecamp and thousands of others use Plausible. Sign up for a 30-day free trial. No credit card required.
