No. 9 of 30 ยท Platform-native and free
Cloudflare Web Analytics
Free, cookieless, and if your site already sits behind Cloudflare it needs no script at all.
Sites proxied through Cloudflare can get server-side analytics with no client-side JavaScript whatsoever.
The verdict
Cloudflare Web Analytics is free, sets no cookies, requires no consent banner, and if your site is already proxied through Cloudflare it can measure traffic with no client-side JavaScript at all, because the edge already sees every request. For a site on Cloudflare, that combination is close to unbeatable as a baseline, and there is no good reason not to switch it on.
The Core Web Vitals reporting is the other genuine strength. Because Cloudflare sits in the request path, the performance data is real field data rather than a lab estimate, and having it next to traffic figures is useful in a way most analytics tools cannot match.
What you actually get
The depth score of 3 says the rest. Pageviews, visits, referrers, paths, countries, browsers, operating systems, device types and Core Web Vitals, and then it stops. There are no goals, no funnels, no meaningful segmentation, no events worth the name, no heatmaps and no replay. You cannot answer a conversion question with it.
Data ownership scores a 4 because export options are limited and the history lives inside Cloudflare's dashboard on Cloudflare's retention terms. That is a fair trade at the price, but it means this is a baseline layer rather than a system of record. The sensible way to use it is exactly that: leave it on for free as a sanity check on whatever else you run, particularly since it measures visitors that script-based tools lose to blocking.
Best for
Any site already behind Cloudflare, as a free, always-on, script-free baseline that also reports genuine Core Web Vitals field data.
Getting it running
If the site is proxied through Cloudflare, switch it on in the dashboard and add nothing to the page. Otherwise a small script tag.
What to watch out for
Very shallow: no goals, no funnels, no events of substance, no behaviour tooling. Limited export and retention on Cloudflare's terms. It is a baseline layer, and treating it as your only analytics will leave real questions unanswered.
Pricing and practicalities
Free for everyone, with or without a Cloudflare plan. Script-free operation for proxied sites. Includes Core Web Vitals field data. No cookies and no consent banner required. Read 2026-09-11.
Who should go elsewhere
Anyone who needs to understand conversion or behaviour, where Absolutely Analytics answers the actual questions and still avoids the banner. Also not a system of record, where Matomo or Umami give you the data itself.
How it compares
Against Plausible Analytics it is free and much shallower, and the two together are a common and sensible pairing. Against Vercel Web Analytics it is the same idea from a different platform, and rather more generous.
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
Cloudflare's own Web Analytics product documentation, read 2026-09-11, including its description of script-free measurement for proxied sites, its metric list and its Core Web Vitals reporting.
Desk research against Cloudflare's published documentation. The claim that proxied sites need no client-side script is taken from Cloudflare's own documentation of that mode.
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.