Blog · 2026-04-20
The best web analytics tools in 2026: an honest comparison
Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, Umami, PostHog, Simple Analytics, Vibestat. What each is actually good at, what they cost, and which one to pick.
I have shipped a lot of side projects. I have also installed every analytics tool I could find at least once, usually because someone on Twitter said it was good and I believed them. Here is what I actually think after living with each.
Disclosure up front: I build vibestat. I tried to write the comparison I would have wanted before I built it. If a competitor is better at the thing you need, I say so.
The shortlist
| Tool | Free tier | Cookies | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics 4 | Generous | Yes | Funnels, ad attribution, you already use Google Ads |
| Plausible | 30-day trial | No | Privacy-first marketing sites, GDPR |
| Fathom | 7-day trial | No | Same as Plausible, slightly nicer UI |
| Simple Analytics | 14-day trial | No | Tiny dashboards, calm UI |
| Umami | 500 events/mo free | No | Self-hosting, cheap cloud tier |
| PostHog | 1M events/mo free | Optional | Product analytics, feature flags, session replay |
| Vibestat | Always free for indie sites | No | Audit + analytics in one, AI-built sites |
Google Analytics 4
Still the default. If you run Google Ads, just use it. The integration with Google Search Console and Google Ads is the only reason to put up with the UI, and the UI is genuinely the worst part of any analytics product I have ever used.
GA4 sets cookies, requires a consent banner in the EU and UK, and quietly samples your data once you cross 10M events a month on the free tier. The data is not yours; it is Google's, and they reserve the right to do whatever they want with it. For a startup landing page that nobody has heard of yet, it is overkill. For a real e-commerce funnel that already buys ads, it is unmatched.
Plausible
Plausible deserves the hype. EU-based, no cookies, ~1KB script, the dashboard is one screen and tells you everything that matters in five seconds. The killer feature is the share link: you can publish a public dashboard and put it on your site as a transparency thing.
Pricing starts at $9/month for 10K pageviews. After 100K it gets pricey. Self-hosting is free but a real commitment (Docker, Postgres, Clickhouse). For most indie projects, the cloud is the right call.
Fathom
Fathom is Plausible's older twin. They had a public split a few years back and now compete politely. UI is slightly more polished, the email reports are excellent, and they have a separate isolated infrastructure for compliance-conscious customers. Pricing is similar.
If you are choosing between Plausible and Fathom, flip a coin. Both are great. Plausible feels more developer-y, Fathom feels more designer-y. Same tool, different vibes.
Simple Analytics
The most opinionated of the bunch. They strip out almost everything: no event funnels, no goal tracking, no fancy filters. You get pageviews, referrers, top pages, devices. That is on purpose, and once you accept it, the dashboard is genuinely the calmest thing you have ever opened in a browser tab.
Pick this if you actively want less data, not more. If you find yourself opening GA4 once a quarter and feeling overwhelmed, this is your tool.
Umami
Umami is the open-source one most people end up self-hosting on a $5 droplet. The cloud tier is generous (500 events/mo free, then $9/mo). The product is solid but not flashy. Set it up once, never think about it again.
Pick Umami if you have strong opinions about owning your data and you are comfortable with Docker. Skip if you would rather not run another service.
PostHog
PostHog is in a different category. It is a product analytics suite: events, funnels, feature flags, session replay, A/B tests, surveys. The free tier is enormous (1M events/mo) and the product is genuinely good.
The catch is complexity. Setting up PostHog properly takes a couple of hours. The dashboards are powerful and overwhelming. You feel like an analytics intern at a startup, in a good way and a bad way. If you have a real product with users doing things, this is the right tool. If you have a marketing page, it is wildly oversized.
Vibestat
Where vibestat is different: most of the tools above tell you how many people visited. Vibestat also tells you why fewer people might be visiting. Every site gets a free SEO + performance + security audit with a plain-English AI summary that says, in one paragraph, what to fix first.
For an indie or vibe-coded site that just shipped, that is usually more valuable than another pageview chart. Once you have grown past the audit stage, vibestat also does the basic analytics: pageviews, referrers, web vitals, no cookies. It is not as deep as Plausible or as broad as PostHog. It is built for the first six months of a project, when you do not yet have enough traffic for a chart to be useful.
How to choose, in 30 seconds
- You run Google Ads or have a real e-commerce funnel: Google Analytics 4
- You want a beautiful, calm pageview dashboard for your marketing site: Plausible or Fathom
- You want even less than that: Simple Analytics
- You want to self-host on a cheap droplet: Umami
- You have a real product with users doing things: PostHog
- You just shipped an AI-built or indie site and want to know what to fix first: vibestat
What I left out
Mixpanel and Amplitude (great products, enterprise pricing). Heap (good for autocapture, mostly mid-market). Cloudflare Web Analytics (free, decent, hard to beat for free; but only if you are already on Cloudflare). Matomo (the elder open-source option; powerful but heavier than Umami).
For 95% of indie sites, the right answer is on the shortlist above. For the other 5%, you probably already know which one you need.