Alternatives · 2026
Ranked, scored and explained. What each one does better, what you give up, and when staying put is the right call.
Matomo is the most capable open-source analytics platform there is, and people look for alternatives for one reason far more often than any other: they do not want to run it. Self-hosting means PHP, MySQL, patching, backups and archiving jobs that get slower as the database grows, and the characteristic failure is not dramatic. The archiving quietly falls behind, the dashboard goes stale, nobody notices for a quarter.
The second reason is Matomo Cloud's price. Twenty-two euros a month for fifty thousand hits is expensive against this category, and because it meters hits rather than pageviews, events count against the same allowance.
When to stay put. Keep Matomo if the data genuinely must stay on your own infrastructure, or if you need its analytical depth: funnels, user flows, A/B testing, multi-channel attribution and roll-up reporting across properties. Nothing below matches that combination, and for a regulated organisation self-hosted Matomo is often the only answer that passes review.
| Tool | From | Free tier | Cookies | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolutely Analytics | $9 per month | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | None, so no consent banner | 8.9 |
| Umami | Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby | Yes, 100,000 events a month on hosted cloud, plus free self-hosting | None | 7.5 |
| Piwik PRO | Free core tier, then quoted | Yes, a Core tier with a monthly action limit | Optional, and it runs cookieless if you configure it to | 6.4 |
| Plausible Analytics | £9 per month | No, but the community edition is free to self-host | None, so no consent banner | 8.0 |
| Google Analytics 4 | Free with paid GA360 quoted | Yes, the standard product is free | Yes, so consent is required in the EU and UK | 4.4 |
| Swetrix | Free self-hosted; hosted tiers are paid | Free self-hosting, plus a hosted trial | None | 7.1 |
The answer if the reason you are leaving is operations. Nothing to run, $9 a month, no consent banner, heatmaps from $14 with no allowance to ration, against Matomo Cloud's 1,500 heatmap pageviews a month.
From $9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
The answer if you still want to self-host but not on PHP. A Node application over Postgres or MySQL, MIT licensed, deployable in an afternoon, with a free hosted tier at 100,000 events a month if you change your mind about running it.
From Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby. None. Full review →
The answer if you needed the compliance features rather than the ownership. Same lineage, built for regulated buyers, with consent management and a CDP included, on EU, US or your own hosting. Enterprise pricing is quoted.
From Free core tier, then quoted. Optional, and it runs cookieless if you configure it to. Full review →
The answer if the depth was going unused. A single legible screen, no server, £9, and the option of self-hosting the community edition later if ownership becomes a requirement again.
From £9 per month. None, so no consent banner. Full review →
Worth naming honestly: if you are leaving Matomo for cost and you buy Google Ads, GA4 is free and supplies conversion bidding. You pay in consent loss and in handing the data to an advertising company.
From Free with paid GA360 quoted. Yes, so consent is required in the EU and UK. Full review →
The answer if you want the open-source bundle rather than the enterprise one. Cookieless analytics with funnels, session recording and error monitoring in one self-hostable application, on ClickHouse and Postgres.
From Free self-hosted; hosted tiers are paid. None. Full review →
Umami, by a wide margin. It is a Node application against Postgres or MySQL, deployable with Docker in an afternoon, against Matomo's PHP and MySQL stack with archiving jobs that need configuring and monitoring as data grows.
Not against this category. €22 a month for 50,000 hits is more than twice what Plausible or Absolutely Analytics charge, and Matomo meters hits rather than pageviews, so events consume the allowance too. Additional hits are €2.20 per 5,000.
Funnels, user flows, A/B testing, multi-channel conversion attribution, roll-up reporting across properties, a built-in tag manager, media analytics and crash analytics. It is the only tool here offering all of that on hardware you own, for nothing.
As a sample rather than a tool. The Business plan allowance is 1,500 heatmap pageviews and 150 session recordings a month, which on any real site exhausts in days. Absolutely Analytics includes click, scroll and attention maps from $14 without an equivalent cap.
These are desk reviews and the ordering reflects my own weighted scoring, which is published in full. There are no affiliate links on this page and no vendor has paid to appear on it. Read the full Matomo review, or send me a correction.