umamivsplausible

what each one actually is

Umami is an open-source, self-hostable web analytics platform. you deploy it yourself (docker, vercel, railway, a vps — anywhere node and postgres run) or pay for their hosted cloud version if you'd rather not. either way you get the same dashboard: pageviews, referrers, devices, custom events, all without cookies.

Plausible is also open source, but the product is built primarily around the hosted offering. you can self-host plausible too — the code is on github — but the setup is heavier (clickhouse is part of the stack) and the team clearly wants you on their cloud plan. it's the more "finished product" of the two if you're paying for convenience.

pricing, honestly

umami self-hosted is free, full stop — no feature gate, no usage cap beyond your own server's capacity. umami cloud starts cheap, roughly in line with plausible's entry tier, for people who want the managed version without running infrastructure.

plausible's hosted plans start around $9/month for up to 10k monthly pageviews and scale up from there. self-hosting plausible is technically free but operationally heavier than umami — clickhouse is a real piece of infrastructure to maintain, not a single postgres instance.

if "free" means "i will actually run a server," umami is cheaper. if "free" means "i don't want a credit card line item," they're roughly the same once you account for your own time.

what it's actually like to use them

umami's self-hosting story is the whole pitch. one docker-compose file, point it at a postgres database, done. the dashboard is clean, fast, and intentionally unopinionated — you won't find much hand-holding, but you also won't fight the tool.

plausible's hosted dashboard is slightly more polished out of the box, with a few more built-in funnel and goal-tracking features at the higher tiers. if you self-host plausible, expect more moving parts (clickhouse, a separate ingestion service) and a setup that takes meaningfully longer than umami's.

for a non-technical team that just wants analytics without thinking about it, plausible cloud is the smoother on-ramp. for a team that already runs a few self-hosted services and doesn't mind one more, umami feels like the natural fit.

who umami is for

• teams already comfortable self-hosting small services who want analytics with zero recurring cost
• developers who want full data ownership and don't trust a third party with even anonymized traffic data
• side projects and indie products where the analytics budget is genuinely zero

who plausible is for

• teams that want analytics to be someone else's problem, paid for monthly
• marketing teams that want slightly more built-in goal and funnel tracking without configuring it themselves
• companies that need a vendor with a support contract, not a github issue queue

when to avoid each

don't choose umami if nobody on the team wants to own a running service. self-hosted analytics still means you're the one who gets paged when the database fills the disk.

don't choose plausible if you specifically want to avoid recurring subscriptions and you're willing to run infrastructure — umami self-hosted does the same job for free, with a lighter stack.

stuff their landing pages won't tell you

• umami's self-hosted upgrade path (new major versions) sometimes requires a database migration step — read the release notes before pulling the latest image
• plausible's self-hosted version needs clickhouse, which is a heavier operational commitment than most teams expect from a "lightweight analytics" tool
• both tools undercount traffic from users with aggressive ad blockers or strict browser privacy modes — neither is immune to this, despite the privacy-first marketing
• umami cloud and plausible cloud both have data residency in the eu by default, which matters if your compliance team asks
• neither tool replaces server-side analytics if you need accurate numbers in the face of ad blockers — consider a server-side pixel if that's a hard requirement

the call

umami if you're already running other self-hosted infrastructure and want one more free service rather than one more subscription. the self-hosted tier costs nothing beyond your own server and is genuinely full-featured.

plausible if you want analytics handled like a utility — pay monthly, never look at a server, get a polished dashboard. the hosted tier is worth the price the moment your time is worth more than $9 a month.

either way, you're choosing not to use google analytics, which is most of the actual decision already made.