GhostStat vs Plausible: privacy-first analytics compared

Plausible is one of the best-known privacy-first analytics tools, and for good reason: it is simple, it is open source and it does not use cookies. GhostStat starts from the same principles. So what is the difference between GhostStat and Plausible? Mostly depth. Plausible deliberately keeps to a lean, one-page dashboard; GhostStat adds heatmaps, session recordings, funnels on every plan and a layer of visitor intelligence. Every statement about Plausible below links to plausible.io.

Last checked: 11 October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.

Plausible vs GhostStat at a glance

What Plausible and GhostStat have in common

Both tools were built so that you do not need to track people to understand your website. Plausible says it uses no cookies and no persistent identifiers, and that it is made and hosted in the EU. GhostStat sets no cookies, uses no localStorage, sessionStorage or fingerprinting, and never writes an IP address to disk; the IP is only used in memory for a location lookup. Its data is stored in Dronten, the Netherlands, so both tools keep your analytics inside the EU. Our privacy policy lists exactly what is collected.

The practical result is the same for both: you get the numbers without a cookie banner for the analytics, and you measure every visitor instead of only the ones who click “accept”.

Simplicity: Plausible’s strength

Plausible’s promise is a dashboard you understand at a glance. Plausible puts “all the important stats on one single page”. Its script is small, too; Plausible describes it as 54 times smaller than Google Analytics. If your question is “how many people came, from where, and which pages did they read”, Plausible answers it beautifully.

GhostStat’s core dashboard covers the same ground, and its core tracker is also small: about 3 KB compressed. The difference is what comes next.

Depth: heatmaps, recordings and visitor intelligence

When the question becomes “why did people leave the checkout?” or “what are visitors doing on this page?”, Plausible stops. Its site does not list heatmaps or session recordings, and funnels are part of its Business plan, as is ecommerce revenue attribution.

In GhostStat, every plugin is available on every plan, Free included:

• Heatmaps for clicks, scrolling and movement.
• Session recordings with all form inputs masked by default.
• Funnels, goals and form analytics.
• A/B tests, ecommerce, cohorts and retention.
• Visitor intelligence: intent, friction and attention per visit, read from behaviour rather than from a cookie.
• Public stats pages and counters if you like to share your numbers openly.

On Free, each plugin has a monthly view allowance; paid plans remove it. You only switch on the plugins you need, so the dashboard stays as simple as you want it.

Open source and self-hosting

Plausible is open source under the AGPLv3. Its open-source page describes a free, self-hosted Community Edition, with a slower release cycle and fewer features than the hosted service. If you need to run analytics on your own servers, that is a real advantage.

GhostStat is not open source. It is a hosted service; for enterprise customers it sets up custom installations on their own infrastructure, without a public download. If you want to download and self-host analytics yourself, Plausible Community Edition or Matomo is the better route; see our Matomo comparison.

Data retention and price

Plausible’s plans start at $9 a month for Starter, $14 for Growth and $19 for Business, at the entry tier of up to 10,000 monthly pageviews; prices rise with traffic. Plausible lists data retention of 3 years on Starter and 5 years on Business, and offers a 30-day free trial without a card.

GhostStat has a Free plan, so you can start without a trial clock. Paid plans and the retention window per plan are on our pricing page, read live from our billing system.

Setting up and living with each tool

Installing either tool takes a few minutes: you add one script tag to your site and the first visits show up in the dashboard. Because neither tool sets cookies, there is no banner to wire up and no consent state to pass along, which removes the most fragile part of a typical Google Analytics setup.

The difference shows up later, when someone in the team asks a harder question. With Plausible the answer is often “we would need another tool for that”, for example a separate service for heatmaps or recordings, each with its own script, its own privacy review and its own bill. With GhostStat you switch on the plugin that answers the question in the same dashboard, under the same privacy rules, and switch it off again when you are done. Fewer scripts on your pages also means less for visitors to download.

Questions to ask before you switch

• Do we need to see behaviour, or only traffic? If traffic is enough, both tools work; if you need heatmaps or recordings, Plausible needs a second tool.
• Must the analytics run on our own servers? Then the open-source Plausible Community Edition is the option of the two.
• How much traffic do we have, and how fast is it growing? Compare the tier you would land on in a year, not only today.
• Who will use the dashboard? A marketing team that wants one simple page may prefer Plausible; a product or UX team that wants to see where visitors struggle will get more from GhostStat.

Plausible or GhostStat: how to choose

Choose Plausible if you want the simplest possible dashboard, if open source matters to you, or if you want to self-host the Community Edition.

Choose GhostStat if you want the same privacy standard plus heatmaps, session recordings, funnels and visitor intelligence in one place, on every plan, and a Free plan to start on. Start free or try the live demo first.

Looking at more tools? Read the best Google Analytics alternatives or GhostStat vs Google Analytics 4.

Sources

• Plausible: Home page and pricing
• Plausible: Open source website analytics