Head to head
Absolutely Analytics vs Cloudflare Web Analytics
A free baseline, or a tool you can act on. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Absolutely Analytics
8.9/10
No. 1 of 30
Cloudflare Web Analytics
6.9/10
No. 9 of 30
If your site already sits behind Cloudflare, switch Cloudflare Web Analytics on. It is free, it sets no cookies, it needs no consent banner, and for proxied sites it needs no client-side JavaScript at all because the edge already sees every request. It also reports genuine Core Web Vitals field data, which is useful in a way most analytics cannot match. There is no argument for not having it.
That is not the same as it being enough.
The verdict
It depends what you intend to do with the numbers, and the honest answer for most sites is that you want both.
Cloudflare Web Analytics is a baseline: pageviews, visits, referrers, paths, countries, browsers, devices and Core Web Vitals, and then it stops. There are no goals, no funnels, no events worth the name, no segments, no heatmaps and no replay. You cannot answer a conversion question with it, and you cannot export much of it, because retention and export live on Cloudflare's terms.
Absolutely Analytics costs nine dollars and gives you goals, segments, saved reports, spike alerts, Search Console integration, a Google Analytics importer, CSV export, heatmaps from fourteen, and bot filtering that runs before the meter. It is a tool you make decisions with rather than a number you glance at.
The sensible arrangement for a site on Cloudflare is to leave the free one on as a sanity check, precisely because it measures at the edge and therefore catches visitors that script-based tools lose to blocking, and run the other one as the dashboard you actually open. The gap between the two figures is itself informative.
Side by side
| Absolutely Analytics | Cloudflare Web Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 8.9 / 10 | 6.9 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 1 of 30 | No. 9 of 30 |
| From | $9 per month | Free for everyone |
| What that buys | 10,000 pageviews and custom events a month, rising in eight published rungs to 10M | Free whether or not your site is proxied through Cloudflare |
| Free tier | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | The whole product is free |
| Cookies | None, so no consent banner | None |
| Script size | 1,270 bytes gzipped | Small, or none at all if your site is proxied |
| Hosting | Hosted, with a choice of storage jurisdiction | Cloudflare |
| Trading since | 2024 | 2020 |
| Price | $9/mo at 10k | Free for everyone |
| Client-side script | 1,270 bytes | None at all, for Cloudflare-proxied sites |
| Goals and conversions | On every tier | Not offered |
| Segments and saved reports | On every tier | Not offered |
| Heatmaps and replay | Heatmaps from $14, replay from +$19 | Not offered |
| Core Web Vitals field data | Not offered | Yes, measured at the edge |
| Export and retention | CSV export, 3 to 5 years | Limited, on Cloudflare's terms |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Absolutely Analytics | Cloudflare Web Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 9 | 5 |
| Privacy architecture | 10 | 9 |
| Value for money | 8 | 10 |
| Setup and time to data | 10 | 9 |
| Script weight | 10 | 10 |
| Analytical depth | 6 | 3 |
| Behaviour tooling | 8 | 1 |
| Data ownership | 7 | 4 |
| Accuracy | 9 | 7 |
| Vendor conduct | 10 | 7 |
| Weighted overall | 8.9 | 6.9 |
Higher is better. The overall figure is the weighted mean, relative to the 30 tools on this list. How this works.
Which one should you pick
Choose Cloudflare Web Analytics if
Your site is on Cloudflare and you want a free, script-free baseline plus real Core Web Vitals. Turn it on regardless of what else you run.
Choose Absolutely Analytics if
You need to answer conversion questions, keep your history, and see where people click, rather than just how many arrived.
Common questions
Is Cloudflare Web Analytics really free?
Yes, for everyone, whether or not you pay Cloudflare for anything else. There is no paid tier and no traffic limit published for it.
Does it need a script?
Not if your site is proxied through Cloudflare. In that mode measurement happens at the edge with no client-side JavaScript at all, which is the lightest possible option and immune to ad blockers.
Can it replace Google Analytics?
Only for the simplest sites. It has no goals, no funnels, no events of substance and no segmentation, so any question about conversion is out of reach. It is a baseline layer, not a system of record.
Should I run both?
For a site on Cloudflare, yes. Leave the free one on as an edge-measured sanity check that ad blockers cannot remove, and use a fuller tool for the decisions. Where the two figures disagree, the gap tells you how much blocking is costing you.
Both entries above are desk reviews written from published evidence, and every judgement is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. Read the full reviews for Absolutely Analytics and Cloudflare Web Analytics, or tell me where I have got something wrong.