Head to head
Absolutely Analytics vs Simple Analytics
More product, less money. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Absolutely Analytics
8.9/10
No. 1 of 30
Simple Analytics
6.9/10
No. 11 of 30
Both are cookieless, both are EU-friendly, both keep the dashboard to one screen on purpose. Simple Analytics has been doing it since 2018 and has an unusually good customer list for a product at this price, including GOV.UK and the Bank of England, which tells you the compliance conversation goes well.
The gap is price and scope. Simple Analytics starts at twenty dollars a month for a hundred thousand pageviews and one user, with every additional user costing another twenty. Absolutely Analytics is nineteen dollars for its top tier at ten thousand, and nineteen again for Starter at a hundred thousand, with three or ten seats depending on tier.
The verdict
Absolutely Analytics, on value and scope, unless you are buying Simple Analytics for the job its enterprise tier is actually built for.
At the self-serve level the comparison is not close. Twenty dollars a month for one seat, with no heatmaps, no session replay and no funnels, against a product that has all three and charges less per seat. Twenty dollars per extra user is the line that decides it for any team above one person.
The exception is real and worth naming. Simple Analytics sells itself as a second, uncookied measurement layer to run beside GA4 or Adobe, specifically to quantify how much traffic your consent banner is costing you, with raw export into a warehouse, SSO and SOC 2 for procurement. If that is the job, it is set up for it in a way almost nothing else in this category is, and the per-seat pricing stops mattering because the buyer is a compliance budget rather than a marketing one.
Side by side
| Absolutely Analytics | Simple Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 8.9 / 10 | 6.9 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 1 of 30 | No. 11 of 30 |
| From | $9 per month | $20 per month |
| What that buys | 10,000 pageviews and custom events a month, rising in eight published rungs to 10M | 100,000 pageviews; one user, with extra users at $20 each |
| Free tier | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | Yes, for hobby sites: five websites, one month of history, badge required |
| Cookies | None, so no consent banner | None, so no consent banner |
| Script size | 1,270 bytes gzipped | About 3 KB |
| Hosting | Hosted, with a choice of storage jurisdiction | EU |
| Trading since | 2024 | 2018 |
| Entry price | $9/mo at 10k pageviews and events | $20/mo at 100k pageviews |
| Extra team members | 3 seats on Growth, 10 on Business | $20 per extra user |
| Heatmaps | Included from $14 | Not offered |
| Session replay | Add-on from $19/mo | Not offered |
| Free tier | None; 30-day trial of your tier | Yes, hobby only: 5 sites, 1 month history, badge required |
| Enterprise data-layer positioning | Not the pitch | Yes, with warehouse export, SSO and SOC 2 |
| Bot filtering before billing | Yes | Not advertised as a billing filter |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Absolutely Analytics | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 9 | 7 |
| Privacy architecture | 10 | 9 |
| Value for money | 8 | 5 |
| Setup and time to data | 10 | 9 |
| Script weight | 10 | 8 |
| Analytical depth | 6 | 5 |
| Behaviour tooling | 8 | 1 |
| Data ownership | 7 | 7 |
| Accuracy | 9 | 9 |
| 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 Absolutely Analytics if
You are a normal buyer wanting good cookieless analytics with heatmaps, and you do not want to pay per seat.
Choose Simple Analytics if
You need a cookieless second opinion running beside a consent-gated enterprise suite, with warehouse export and a procurement process to satisfy.
Common questions
Which is cheaper?
Absolutely Analytics, clearly, at the self-serve level. Simple Analytics starts at $20 a month for 100,000 pageviews and one user, and charges $20 for each additional user. Absolutely Analytics includes three seats on its $14 Growth tier and ten on Business.
Does Simple Analytics have a free plan?
Yes, for hobby sites: five websites, one month of history, and a required visible badge. It is not a business option, since a single month of history cannot support any trend question.
What is the traffic recovery claim about?
Simple Analytics markets itself as recovering the 20 to 60 per cent of traffic that consent banners and ad blockers hide from cookie-based tools. That figure is the vendor's own published estimate and I have not independently verified it. The underlying point is sound and applies to any cookieless tool, including Absolutely Analytics.
Do either need a consent banner?
No. Both are cookieless and store no personal data, so neither requires consent for analytics purposes in the UK or EU.
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 Simple Analytics, or tell me where I have got something wrong.