Compare pricing, deployment, product fit, integrations, and capabilities side by side.
Website owners who want simple, privacy-focused analytics
Important considerations: Hosted use is donation-supported with a reasonable-use policy; high-volume or specialized deployments should be self-hosted.
Privacy-conscious site owners, SaaS teams, and agencies that need compact traffic and conversion analytics without session replay
Important considerations: There is no permanent cloud free plan. Self-hosting is an Enterprise license rather than the standard open-source deployment path, and pageviews, events, and session extensions count toward usage.
| Attribute | GoatCounter | Pirsch Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | A lightweight, privacy-aware open-source web analytics service with cookieless visit counting, referrers, campaigns, browser and location reports, exports, and JavaScript-free tracking options. | A privacy-friendly web analytics service with cookieless visitor measurement, events, goals, session analysis, funnels, revenue metrics, Search Console data, A/B testing, APIs, and an Enterprise self-hosting option. |
| Pricing | Hosted service is donation-supported and free for reasonable public use; self-hosting is free and open source | 30-day trial; Standard starts at $6/month and Plus at $12/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews; Enterprise and self-hosted deployment use custom pricing |
| Deployment | Self-hosted and hosted options | Self-hosted and hosted options |
| Best for | Website owners who want simple, privacy-focused analytics | Privacy-conscious site owners, SaaS teams, and agencies that need compact traffic and conversion analytics without session replay |
| Operator | Martin Tournoij Independent project | Emvi Software GmbH Independent private company |
| Company base | Ireland · European Union | Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany · European Union |
| Organization scale | 1 maintainers · operator, as of 13 Aug 2026 | 1 employees · operator, as of 30 Dec 2025 |
| Recent direction | self-hosted expansion Recent official evidence shows a focus on self-hosted expansion. | marketing attribution Recent official evidence shows a focus on marketing attribution. |
| Key features |
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| Important considerations | Hosted use is donation-supported with a reasonable-use policy; high-volume or specialized deployments should be self-hosted. | There is no permanent cloud free plan. Self-hosting is an Enterprise license rather than the standard open-source deployment path, and pageviews, events, and session extensions count toward usage. |
| Integrations | Ghost, Hugo | Google Search Console, WordPress, REST API, Webhooks, JavaScript and server SDKs |
| Fact check | We checked this information against official vendor sources on 2026-08-27. | We checked this information against official vendor sources on 2026-08-09. |
This matrix shows capabilities recorded in our catalog. Not listed means we have not confirmed the capability here. Check the linked vendor sources for plan, deployment, and usage limits.
| Attribute | GoatCounter | Pirsch Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| A/B testing | Not listed | Listed |
| Audience insights | Listed | Not listed |
| Behavior analytics | Not listed | Listed |
| CCPA compliant | Listed | Not listed |
| Cookieless | Listed | Listed |
| Custom reports | Listed | Listed |
| Data export | Listed | Listed |
| Data ownership | Listed | Listed |
| E-commerce tracking | Not listed | Listed |
| Enterprise | Not listed | Listed |
| Event tracking | Listed | Listed |
| Free plan | Listed | Not listed |
| Funnels | Not listed | Listed |
| GDPR compliant | Listed | Listed |
| Goals | Not listed | Listed |
| Integrations | Listed | Listed |
| Open source | Listed | Listed |
| Privacy-first | Listed | Listed |
| Real-time data | Listed | Listed |
| Revenue tracking | Not listed | Listed |
| Self-hosted | Listed | Listed |
| SEO research | Not listed | Listed |
| User segments | Listed | Listed |
| Web analytics | Not listed | Listed |