Head to head
Absolutely Analytics vs Umami
Free and yours, or paid and finished. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Absolutely Analytics
8.9/10
No. 1 of 30
Umami
7.5/10
No. 4 of 30
Umami is the open-source cookieless tool I would actually recommend someone self-host, because unlike Matomo it does not require you to become a systems administrator. It is a Node application over Postgres, it deploys cleanly, and the source is small enough to read. Free forever if you run it, and its hosted Hobby tier gives you a hundred thousand events a month for nothing with no badge and no expiry.
Absolutely Analytics has no free tier at all. So for a personal site, a documentation site or a side project, this comparison is decided before it begins.
The verdict
It depends on whether the site earns money.
For a personal or hobby site, take Umami. A hundred thousand events a month for nothing, hosted, with no badge requirement, is the best free offer in the cookieless category, and self-hosting is genuinely an afternoon rather than a project.
For a business site the calculation changes, and it changes at the point where you want behaviour tooling. Umami's session replay and heatmaps only appear on its Business tier at two hundred dollars a month. Absolutely Analytics includes heatmaps from fourteen. That is not a small gap, it is an order of magnitude, and it is the single fact that decides most commercial comparisons between these two.
Umami also filters bots less aggressively than the tools that make a feature of it, and its segmentation is thinner than Plausible's or Pirsch's. Against that, it is the only one of the two whose data is unambiguously yours, on your database, under an MIT licence.
Side by side
| Absolutely Analytics | Umami | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 8.9 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 1 of 30 | No. 4 of 30 |
| From | $9 per month | Free self-hosted and on cloud Hobby |
| What that buys | 10,000 pageviews and custom events a month, rising in eight published rungs to 10M | Cloud Hobby is free at 100,000 events a month; Pro is $20 for 1M events |
| Free tier | No free tier. A 30-day trial of the exact tier you picked | Yes, 100,000 events a month on hosted cloud, plus free self-hosting |
| Cookies | None, so no consent banner | None |
| Script size | 1,270 bytes gzipped | About 2 KB |
| Hosting | Hosted, with a choice of storage jurisdiction | Your own servers, or hosted cloud |
| Trading since | 2024 | 2020 |
| Price for a small site | $9/mo, no free tier | Free: self-hosted, or 100k events/mo hosted |
| Heatmaps | Included from $14/mo | Business tier only, $200/mo |
| Session replay | Add-on from $19/mo | Business tier only, $200/mo, 5,000 replays |
| Self-hosting | No | Yes, MIT licensed, Node and Postgres |
| Bot filtering | Filtered before counting and before billing | Present but less aggressive |
| Data ownership | Hosted, choice of jurisdiction | Total, if you self-host |
| Retention on the entry paid tier | 3 years | 2 years on Pro at $20 |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Absolutely Analytics | Umami |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 9 | 7 |
| Privacy architecture | 10 | 9 |
| Value for money | 8 | 9 |
| Setup and time to data | 10 | 6 |
| Script weight | 10 | 9 |
| Analytical depth | 6 | 6 |
| Behaviour tooling | 8 | 4 |
| Data ownership | 7 | 10 |
| Accuracy | 9 | 6 |
| Vendor conduct | 10 | 7 |
| Weighted overall | 8.9 | 7.5 |
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 Umami if
It is a personal site, a side project or documentation, or you want the data on your own database under an open licence.
Choose Absolutely Analytics if
It is a commercial site and you want heatmaps, harder bot filtering and nothing to operate, without paying $200 a month for the privilege.
Common questions
Is Umami really free?
Yes, in two ways. The software is MIT licensed and free to self-host on Node with Postgres or MySQL. The hosted Hobby tier is also free at 100,000 events a month for one site with six months of retention, with no badge required.
When does Umami stop being the cheaper option?
When you want heatmaps or session replay. Those are only on Umami's Business tier at $200 a month. Absolutely Analytics includes click, scroll and attention maps from its $14 Growth tier, so the comparison inverts sharply at that point.
How hard is Umami to self-host?
Considerably easier than Matomo. It is a Docker or Node deployment against Postgres or MySQL, which is an afternoon for anyone comfortable with either. You still own backups, upgrades and uptime.
Do both avoid the cookie banner?
Yes. Both are cookieless and store no personal identifiers, so neither needs 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 Umami, or tell me where I have got something wrong.