Head to head
Plausible Analytics vs Simple Analytics
More product for less than half the money. Scored on ten weighted measures, with every price read on the same day.
Plausible Analytics
8.0/10
No. 2 of 30
Simple Analytics
6.9/10
No. 11 of 30
Two European cookieless tools with almost the same pitch: one screen, no cookies, no consent banner, no training required. Both have been trading since 2018 or 2019 and both have credible customer lists. On paper this should be a close call.
It is not, and the reason is pricing structure rather than product quality.
The verdict
Plausible, on value, by a wide margin at the self-serve level. Simple Analytics starts at twenty dollars a month for a hundred thousand pageviews and one user, and charges twenty dollars for every additional user. Plausible's Starter is £9, its Growth tier at £14 includes three seats, and its Business tier at £19 adds funnels, user journeys, custom properties, ecommerce revenue attribution and a Stats API. Simple Analytics has none of those at its self-serve price.
There is a real case for Simple Analytics and it is not the dashboard. Its enterprise tier is built to be a second, uncookied measurement layer running alongside GA4 or Adobe, specifically to quantify what your consent banner is costing you, with warehouse export, Looker Studio, SSO and SOC 2. Its customer list, which includes GOV.UK and the Bank of England, is plainly people doing exactly that. If that is the job, per-seat pricing stops mattering because the buyer is a compliance budget.
For everybody else, Plausible does more for less.
Side by side
| Plausible Analytics | Simple Analytics | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 8.0 / 10 | 6.9 / 10 |
| Rank on this list | No. 2 of 30 | No. 11 of 30 |
| From | £9 per month | $20 per month |
| What that buys | 10,000 monthly pageviews, on a Starter tier | 100,000 pageviews; one user, with extra users at $20 each |
| Free tier | No, but the community edition is free to self-host | 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 | About 1 KB | About 3 KB |
| Hosting | EU, on European-owned infrastructure | EU |
| Trading since | 2019 | 2018 |
| Entry price | £9/mo at 10k pageviews | $20/mo at 100k pageviews |
| Additional team members | 3 on Growth, 10 on Business | $20 each |
| Funnels and user journeys | Business tier | Not offered |
| Stats API | Business tier | Enterprise tier |
| Free tier | None, 30-day trial | Hobby only: 5 sites, 1 month history, badge |
| Self-hosting | Yes, community edition | No |
| Enterprise data-layer positioning | Not the pitch | Yes, with SOC 2 and warehouse export |
The ten measures, scored
| Measure | Plausible Analytics | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Insight quality | 9 | 7 |
| Privacy architecture | 9 | 9 |
| Value for money | 8 | 5 |
| Setup and time to data | 9 | 9 |
| Script weight | 9 | 8 |
| Analytical depth | 7 | 5 |
| Behaviour tooling | 2 | 1 |
| Data ownership | 8 | 7 |
| Accuracy | 8 | 9 |
| Vendor conduct | 7 | 7 |
| Weighted overall | 8.0 | 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 Plausible Analytics if
You want the best cookieless dashboard for the money, with funnels and an API available when you need them.
Choose Simple Analytics if
You need a cookieless measurement layer beside an enterprise suite, with warehouse export and procurement paperwork.
Common questions
Which is cheaper?
Plausible, substantially, for any normal buyer. £9 for a site against $20, and no per-seat charge below its Growth tier, where Simple Analytics charges $20 for each extra user.
Does either offer heatmaps?
Neither. Both take the view that behaviour tooling belongs elsewhere, which means a second subscription. Tools that include click and scroll maps, such as Absolutely Analytics, avoid that.
Can I self-host either?
Plausible only, through its free community edition. Simple Analytics is hosted-only.
Is Simple Analytics ever the right choice?
Yes, for its enterprise use case: running cookieless measurement beside a consent-gated suite to quantify the measurement gap, with warehouse export and SOC 2. That is a real job and it is unusually well set up for it.
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 Plausible Analytics and Simple Analytics, or tell me where I have got something wrong.