Simple Analytics

YES

Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent.

Page-view analytics with no cookies and no personal data. One script, one dashboard of visitors, pages and referrers, and a public link if you want the numbers open.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Build me first-party page-view analytics with no cookies.

STACK
- One serverless function for collection, SQLite or Postgres for storage
- A single HTML dashboard, no frontend framework

THE SCRIPT
- Under 1KB, no cookie, no localStorage, no fingerprint
- Sends path, referrer, screen bucket and language on load, and again on a history change for single-page apps
- Uses sendBeacon so it never delays a navigation

WHAT IS STORED
- One row per view: path, referrer host, a coarse device and browser bucket, language tag, day
- A visitor identity that is a salted hash of IP and user agent, rotated daily, so the raw values are never written
- Nothing that can be joined back to a person

BOTS
- A user-agent deny list plus a heuristic: no referrer, no screen size, and a request that never fires a second event
- Store bot rows with a flag rather than dropping them, so "how much of that spike was a crawler" stays answerable

THE DASHBOARD
- Views, visitors, top pages, top referrers over a chosen window
- Everything computed at query time from the rows; no aggregate tables
- An optional public mode behind a slug

Include the schema, the script, and a README on the retention period.

What you lose

A bot list maintained against traffic from thousands of sites, which is most of the difference between a real number and a flattering one
A dashboard that already answers the four questions anyone asks of analytics
Somebody else keeping the script small and the endpoint up
A hosted public page you can send to a sponsor without exposing anything else

If you would rather not build

Nothing worth naming here yet — nobody else is doing this job for money.

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

Plausible

Cookie-free analytics, self-hostable with Docker.

plausible/analyticsfree · open source

Umami

A small analytics server that runs beside an existing database.

umami-software/umamifree · open source

GoatCounter

One Go binary and a SQLite file; the least infrastructure of the three.

arp242/goatcounterfree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

84/100

Verdict yes at 84: the collection is a single insert and the dashboard is four queries. The bot list is the part you will keep tuning, and it is the part that decides whether the number is honest.

History

tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 days

Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.

Questions about Simple Analytics

answered from the record above

Is Simple Analytics free?

No — the plan we track is $19 a month. Starter at $19/month billed monthly, around $9 annually, for 100,000 page views.

Can you replace Simple Analytics by building your own?

YES. Replaceable in one session with an AI coding agent. Replacement score 84 out of 100, build time one session. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does Simple Analytics cost?

$19 a month on Starter — $228 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.

What do you lose by replacing Simple Analytics?

A bot list maintained against traffic from thousands of sites, which is most of the difference between a real number and a flattering one; A dashboard that already answers the four questions anyone asks of analytics; Somebody else keeping the script small and the endpoint up; A hosted public page you can send to a sponsor without exposing anything else. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to Simple Analytics?

Yes: Plausible, Umami, GoatCounter. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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