It took me 5() months to build a Plausible alternative
After months of using Google Analytics I realized only about 50% of people accepted my cookie-popup. I had months of incorrect data for my website. I started looking for alternatives and eventually found Plausible, which is great (and open-source). Problem is, I didn't feel like paying 9$ a month to see the amount of visitors on a website i didn't even earn anything on, it was just a hobby project. Eventually I started making my own web analytics. Which actually isn't that hard. It took me about a month of working on my spare time every now and then. Being GDPR compliant basically means to…
In plain words
This is a GDPR-compliant web analytics tool built as an alternative to paid services like Plausible and Google Analytics. It tracks website visitors without requiring cookie consent by avoiding personal identifiers, making it suitable for hobby projects and small websites. The maker developed it over several months to address frustrations with incomplete data from low cookie acceptance rates and subscription costs, designing it to be straightforward to implement while maintaining privacy compliance.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
After months of using Google Analytics I realized only about 50% of people accepted my cookie-popup. I had months of incorrect data for my website. I started looking for alternatives and eventually found Plausible, which is great (and open-source). Problem is, I didn't feel like paying 9$ a month to see the amount of visitors on a website i didn't even earn anything on, it was just a hobby project. Eventually I started making my own web analytics. Which actually isn't that hard. It took me about a month of working on my spare time every now and then. Being GDPR compliant basically means to not save any personal identifiers. At first I thought it would be easy since something like a public IP adress can't count as a personal identifier right? I was very wrong. How it works: When a user visited my website I saved the IP and Header for 24 hours. Then if they visited again I checked the combination of IP and Header against the ones saved in my DB. If they were the same I simply added 1 view to my data. If they weren't the same I added 1 unique daily user and 1 view. That's in short how it works. A few weeks later I realized if I had this problem then other would also have it. So I started working on Simplytics.dev. I had to do a lot of new stuff and re-build my code from the ground-up twice. Small things like OAuth was completely new to me and took up a lot of time. But eventually I got here and just launched something that with the knowledge I have today wouldn't even take a third of the time recreating today. It's my first real "Launch" and it feels really good finally creating something AND publishing it. Instead of a montly fee I opted to make it a pay-once service. Right now it's priced at 49$ but I'll see how it works out. If you got any questions on how it works Id love to answer them.
Does the same job
all alternatives →
- IMI made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics2018 · simpleanalytics.io · ▲968
- IMI made a stupid simple but 100% free web analytics2024 · indielytics.link · ▲29
TLDR: I made a public only web analytics without signup. Stores views and visitors for 10 days before deleting data. Exactly 25 days ago today I posted here, proud of my new web analytics. The response was mixed and my post even got flagged (understandable). It was my first real launch and I actually made a sale just a day later of 49$(!). Back then my project was pay once, keep forever. Since then I have sadly went over to the dark side (subscription based). Anyways, I never went back to look at the post after the first two hours, turns out I got a lot of answers. Most answers was something…
- PSPlausible – Self-Hosted Google Analytics alternative2020 · plausible.io · ▲351
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