7 Google Analytics Alternatives for Small Business Websites (2026)

The comparison

Google Analytics is free and powerful. It's also a bit like being handed the controls of the Millennium Falcon when all you wanted was to see how many people read your "About Us" page. Plenty of owners open GA4, look at the menus, and quietly close the tab.

The good news: you don't need a complicated setup to answer the questions that matter most. Where do my visitors come from? Which pages do they read? Are they filling out the contact form?

These seven Google Analytics alternatives take different approaches, from one-page dashboards to detailed reports you can run on your own server.

How we compared: This is a research-based guide, not a hands-on test. We reviewed each company's published pricing and feature pages, plus recent third-party pricing checks where a vendor's page didn't show everything. Prices were checked on November 6, 2026, and they change often, so confirm on the vendor's site before you buy. Prices are in US dollars unless noted.

The tools are listed alphabetically, not ranked.

Quick comparison

Prices are entry points. Most tools charge more as your traffic grows. Details and sources follow below.

1. Clicky

Good fit: Watching what visitors do, right now

Clicky has been around since 2006 and is built around live activity. You can watch visitors arrive, see which pages they open and follow individual sessions as they happen. Its higher plans add heatmaps and uptime monitoring.

What you get:

• Real-time visitor reports and individual session views
• Segmentation and trend comparisons
• Goals and revenue tracking
• Heatmaps and uptime monitoring on Pro Plus and higher

Pricing snapshot:

• Free: 1 site, 3,000 pageviews a day, 30 days of history
• Pro: $9.99/mo or $79.99/year for 10 sites and 30,000 pageviews a day
• Pro Plus: $14.99/mo or $119.99/year, which adds heatmaps and uptime monitoring
• Pro Platinum: $19.99/mo or $159.99/year for 30 sites and 100,000 pageviews a day
• A 21-day full-feature trial is available

Pros: Affordable, with real-time detail the minimalist tools don't offer. Yearly billing is a bargain.

Keep in mind: Clicky's limits are daily, not monthly, so a viral day can hit the cap. Its interface feels older than the others. Because it can track individual visitors, look closely at its privacy settings and your own consent requirements before you turn on extra tracking.

2. Fathom

Good fit: Running many small sites without many bills

Fathom is another simple, cookieless dashboard. Its standout is the site allowance: even its cheapest plan covers at least 50 websites. If you run a handful of side projects or client sites with modest traffic, that's hard to beat.

What you get:

• A single-page dashboard with traffic sources, top pages and devices
• Event and revenue tracking, plus UTM campaign tracking
• Shared dashboards, saved views, unlimited email reports and exports
• An analytics API and automatic bot filtering
• Your full history for as long as you subscribe

Pricing snapshot: $15/mo for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews, $25/mo for 200,000 and $45/mo for 500,000. Every plan includes at least 50 sites, and extra packs of 50 sites cost $10/mo. Yearly billing gets two months free. There's a 7-day free trial (card required) and no free plan.

Pros: Predictable pricing, lots of sites included and a friendly approach to traffic spikes. Fathom contacts you before changing anything if you stay over your limit.

Keep in mind: Custom events count toward your pageview allowance. The 7-day trial is short, so set up tracking on day one and see real data before it ends.

3. Mage Stats (our product)

Good fit: Agencies and owners who want analytics they can hand to a client

Mage Stats works with websites hosted anywhere. Paste one line of tracking code, or use the WordPress plugin, and you'll see traffic, top pages, sources, campaigns and visitor actions in one dashboard. Its bigger plans add client portals, so each client sees only their own sites.

What you get:

• Traffic, pages, sources, audience and technology reports
• A built-in UTM campaign link builder, with unlimited campaign links
• Custom events and session reports
• A WordPress plugin that automatically tracks WooCommerce activity, form submissions and site searches
• Cookieless tracking

Pricing snapshot:

• 3 Site Starter: $25/mo, or $250/year, for up to 3 sites
• 5 Site Builder: $35/mo, or $350/year, for up to 5 sites, plus a white-label client portal
• 20 Site Agency: $99/mo, or $990/year, for up to 20 sites, a branded client portal and unlimited client users
• Extra sites are sold as "pods," starting at $7/mo for one site
• Sites hosted on Press Mage can add it as a separate analytics package for $10/mo

Pros: The client portal is a real time-saver for agencies tired of exporting screenshots every month. The WordPress plugin tracks forms and WooCommerce without extra setup.

Keep in mind: There's no free plan. The product page doesn't list pageview limits, how long data is kept, or a free trial, so ask before you buy if those matter. For a single small site, $25 a month costs more than several options below.

4. Matomo

Good fit: Detailed, Google Analytics-style reports with control over your data

Matomo is the closest thing on this list to Google Analytics itself, minus Google. It offers deep reports, ecommerce tracking, goals and a tag manager. You can let Matomo host it in the cloud, or install it on your own server for free.

What you get:

• Unsampled reports, meaning numbers aren't estimated from a slice of your traffic
• Raw data access and export
• Goals, custom reports, form analytics and a tag manager
• Premium tools like heatmaps, session recordings, funnels and A/B testing (included in the 21-day Cloud trial)

Pricing snapshot: Matomo Cloud starts at about 29 a month in your local currency (excluding tax) for up to 50,000 hits, with 24 months of raw data. It offers a 21-day free trial with no credit card. Self-hosted Matomo is free forever, with unlimited users and traffic. Premium features for self-hosters come as paid plugins or bundles, and those bundles are priced for bigger organizations.

Pros: The most powerful option here. A good landing spot if you've outgrown simple dashboards but want off Google.

Keep in mind: More power means more menus, so it can feel nearly as busy as GA4. Self-hosting means you handle installation, updates, backups and security. Some features, like heatmaps, cost extra outside the Cloud plan.

5. Plausible

Good fit: Owners who want everything on one clean page

Plausible is the "just tell me what's happening" option. Your most important numbers sit on one page: visitors, top pages, traffic sources, countries, devices and goals. Its tracking script is tiny, so it won't slow your site.

What you get:

• A single-page dashboard with real-time visitors
• Conversion goals and UTM campaign tracking
• Google Search Console integration, so you can see which search terms bring people in
• Email and Slack reports, plus the ability to import old Google Analytics data
• Cookieless tracking, with data hosted in the EU

Pricing snapshot: Pricing scales with monthly pageviews. Starter is $9/mo for one site and 10,000 pageviews. Recent checks put Starter at $19/mo at 100,000 pageviews. Plans for more sites and team members cost more, and the Business plan adds funnels, custom properties and API access. Yearly billing gives you 12 months for the price of 10. A free trial is available, and the open-source Community Edition can be self-hosted for free.

Pros: Probably the easiest dashboard on this list to understand at a glance. Mature, well-known and privacy-focused.

Keep in mind: Starter covers just one site. Features like funnels and ecommerce revenue sit on higher tiers. If you go over your pageview limit for two months, Plausible asks you to upgrade, and dashboards can lock if you don't.

6. Simple Analytics

Good fit: Aggregate reporting with no visitor profiles at all

Simple Analytics counts pageviews and events without creating visitor IDs or profiles. It's a good choice if privacy is your top concern. It can also run alongside Google Analytics as a second opinion.

What you get:

• Pageviews, referrers and UTM campaign data
• Event tracking, exports and an API
• An optional AI assistant that answers questions about your stats (it's opt-in, and the company notes that using it sends data outside the EU)

Pricing snapshot: A free plan covers up to 5 hobby sites with one month of history, and requires showing a Simple Analytics badge. The paid Simple plan starts at $20/mo, with extra users at $20/mo each. Yearly billing gets two months free, and there's a 14-day trial with no credit card. Enterprise pricing is custom.

Pros: Strong privacy stance and a clean interface. The free plan is handy for testing.

Keep in mind: One month of history on the free plan isn't enough to spot real trends. Because it doesn't track individual visitors, its numbers won't match Google Analytics exactly. Compare trends, not exact totals.

7. Umami

Good fit: Open-source analytics with surprisingly strong reports for free

Umami started as a lightweight open-source project and has grown up. Beyond traffic reports, it includes funnels (where people drop off), retention, user journeys, goals and revenue reports. Those tools are often reserved for paid tiers elsewhere.

What you get:

• Traffic dashboards with sources, pages, devices and countries
• Custom events and UTM campaign tracking
• Funnels, retention, journeys, goals and attribution reports
• Cookieless tracking

Pricing snapshot: Umami Cloud's free Hobby plan covers one website and 100,000 events a month, with 6 months of data. Pro is $20/mo for up to 20 websites and 1 million events, with 2 years of data and a 14-day trial. Extra events are billed per use. Self-hosting is free under the MIT open-source license.

Pros: Excellent value, especially the free tier. Open source, so you're never locked in.

Keep in mind: The free Hobby plan leaves out team members, the API and email reports. Self-hosting requires a PostgreSQL database and some comfort with servers. Session replays and heatmaps start on the $200/mo Business cloud plan.

What should you look for?

Five questions do most of the work:

• Can you understand the dashboard? A report should help you make a decision. If you need a tutorial to find your top pages, keep looking.
• Does it track the actions that matter? Think contact forms, downloads, purchases or affiliate-link clicks. Check whether these count toward your plan's limit.
• Can it separate your campaigns? UTM tracking tells you whether your newsletter, Facebook post or Google Business Profile actually brought people in.
• What makes the price go up? Pageviews, events, number of sites and extra users all affect cost. Estimate your traffic before comparing.
• Who maintains it? Hosted services handle the servers. Self-hosting is free in dollars but not in time. Somebody has to apply the updates.

Which should you choose?

• One clean page of stats: Plausible.
• Many small sites on one bill: Fathom (50+ sites from $15/mo).
• Free, with real reports: Umami Cloud Hobby, or self-host it.
• Deep, GA-style analytics without Google: Matomo.
• Maximum privacy, no visitor profiles: Simple Analytics.
• Live activity and heatmaps on a budget: Clicky.
• Client-ready reports for an agency: Consider Mage Stats, keeping in mind it's our product, and confirm its limits fit your traffic.

Start with three questions: Where do visitors come from? Which pages help them? Do they take the action you want? Pick the tool that makes those answers easiest to find. The best analytics tool is the one you'll actually open. A dashboard nobody checks is just a very well-organized diary.