No. 16 of 30 ยท Platform-native and free
Clicky
Nineteen years of real-time analytics, with heatmaps included at a price nobody else matches.
It has offered per-visitor real-time analytics since 2006, long before the current cookieless generation existed.
The verdict
Clicky has been running since 2006, which makes it older than every tool on this list except Google Analytics, Adobe and Matomo, and it has quietly kept a loyal following on one feature: genuine real-time, per-visitor analytics. You can watch individual sessions arrive and move through the site as it happens, which for a publisher during a launch is more useful than a daily summary.
It also includes heatmaps on its paid plans at a price well below the behaviour-tooling category, plus uptime monitoring, which is an unusual bundle.
What you actually get
The privacy position is the thing to be clear about, because it is the mirror image of most of this list. Clicky's default model is individual visitor tracking, with cookies, and the per-visitor session view is the point of the product rather than a side effect. There is a cookieless mode and it works, but you lose the feature people buy it for. That tension is why privacy scores a 5: it is not careless, it is simply built for a different idea of what analytics is, and in the EU or UK the default configuration puts you firmly in consent territory.
The interface shows its age. It is dense, and next to Plausible or Fathom it looks like software from a different decade, because it is. Whether that matters depends on whether you value the density or the calm.
Best for
Publishers and site owners who want to watch traffic arrive in real time at a session level, and who want heatmaps and uptime monitoring in the same cheap subscription.
Getting it running
A script tag and a dashboard. Straightforward, with plugins for the common platforms.
What to watch out for
The default model is individual visitor tracking with cookies, so consent applies in the EU and UK, and the cookieless mode removes the main reason to choose it. The interface is dated and dense. US hosted, which matters for some European buyers.
Pricing and practicalities
A free tier for one site with a daily pageview limit, then paid plans from roughly $10 a month adding heatmaps, more sites, longer retention and uptime monitoring. Read 2026-09-11.
Who should go elsewhere
Anyone whose reason for leaving Google Analytics was the consent banner, since the default configuration here brings it straight back, unlike Absolutely Analytics or Plausible Analytics. Also not for teams who want a calm, legible dashboard.
How it compares
Against Plausible Analytics it is the older, denser, more feature-stuffed tool with a weaker privacy story and a cheaper heatmap. Against Microsoft Clarity the heatmaps are worse and the traffic analytics much better.
The ten measures
Each measure is scored 0 to 10 and weighted. The overall figure is the weighted mean, and it is relative to the other 29 tools on this list rather than absolute. How this works.
What this rests on
Clicky's own feature and pricing pages, read 2026-09-11, including its documentation of real-time per-visitor tracking, heatmaps, uptime monitoring and its cookieless mode.
Desk research against the vendor's published material. The judgement about the interface is a taste call from public screenshots and the public demo, not a usability test.
This is a desk review. I have not been given access by the vendor, I have no commercial relationship with them, and everything above is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. If something here is wrong, tell me and I will correct it.