20 popular Google Analytics alternatives to grow your website

In this guide, we take you through some of the most popular GA alternatives that offer overlapping or complementary features so you can curate the right analytics tech stack to track, optimize, and grow your website.

The 8 best Google Analytics alternatives

1. Hotjar

2. Fathom Analytics

3. Piwik Pro

4. Plausible Analytics

5. Woopra

6. Adobe Analytics

7. Matomo Analytics

8. Clicky

1. Hotjar

What it is: Hotjar (that’s us 👋, welcome!) is a user-friendly behavior analytics platform that makes it easy to:

• Visualize where people click, tap, and scroll with heatmaps

• Watch real user browsing sessions across different pages with session recordings

• Hear what customers love (and hate) by collecting in-the-moment website feedback, running async email and on-site surveys, and live user interviews

What it costs: Hotjar has a free plan for up to 35 daily sessions. All paid plans have a free trial and start at $32/month for Hotjar Observe (Heatmaps + Recordings), $48/month for Hotjar Ask (Surveys + Feedback), and $90/month or PAYG for Hotjar Engage (user interviews).

How Hotjar compares to Google Analytics: because, like GA, it tracks website visitors using a single JavaScript snippet, Hotjar can display some of the same data like bounce rate, top viewed pages, and visitor country in the Dashboard. 

But where Hotjar really adds value is by generating a simple, free way to visualize website behavior and collect customer feedback, with advanced insight filters, custom user attributes, and a large integration library for premium users. 

Hotjar is also a privacy-first platform: sensitive customer data (like credit card numbers) is not collected or stored, you can block IP address collection, and we are compliant with GDPR, ePrivacy, PECR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.

2. Fathom Analytics

What it is: Fathom is a simple, cookieless, privacy-focused website analytics tool.

What it costs: Fathom plans start at $14/month for up to 100,000 monthly page views on up to 50 websites. Yearly accounts give you 2 months free, and all plans have a 30-day free trial.

How Fathom compares to Google Analytics: Unlike GA, Fathom uses cookieless tracking, meaning it can collect data from users who clear cookies or use ad-blockers. Fathom tracks basic analytics data, like pageviews, referral source, UTMs, and custom events, and displays it all in a one-page dashboard that is much simpler to use and understand than Google Analytics (especially GA4). If you need more advanced reporting options, a different tool, like Piwik Pro (see below), might be more suitable.

3. Piwik Pro

What it is: Piwik Pro (not to be confused with Matomo, which used to be known as Piwik!) is an advanced analytics suite and customer data platform.

What it costs: Piwik Pro’s ‘web & product analytics’ suite has a free core plan for up to 500,000 monthly actions. For enterprise plans or ‘intranet analytics’ pricing is by custom quote only.

How Piwik Pro compares to Google Analytics: Piwik Pro offers very similar core functionality to GA: you’ll get comparable reports, like user flow, funnel analysis, and website visitor engagement. Piwik Pro also has additional features you won’t find in GA, including a search engine optimization (SEO) dashboard that replaces some of the functionality of Google Search Console.

You can build in-depth custom reports and integrate them with Google Ads and Search Console if needed. Like Google Analytics, Piwik Pro uses cookies to track users, but it does have consent management tools to make privacy and security compliance easier. 

4. Plausible Analytics

What it is: Plausible is a stripped-down, open-source, cookieless web analytics tool.

What it costs: Plausible starts at $9/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews across up to 50 websites.

How Plausible compares to Google Analytics: Plausible is a lightweight alternative to Google Analytics. It uses cookieless tracking, is built for compliance with GDPR and other privacy and data collection regulations, and displays basic metrics like unique visitors, traffic source, and visitor location on a clear one-page dashboard. Its offering is similar to Fathom’s, but with a cheaper starting price point that would suit a startup or small business. 

5. Woopra

What it is: Woopra is an advanced customer journey analytics platform.

What it costs: Woopra has a free core plan for up to 500,000 actions/month. Pro plans start at $999/month.

How Woopra compares to Google Analytics: Woopra is very different from Google Analytics—it’s more of a customer journey mapping tool for ecommerce and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Woopra tracks individual customer behavior and links it with other user data and personally identifiable Information (PII), like purchase history and product usage. 

Woopra could work as an alternative to GA if you don’t need additional privacy features and want to combine customer and website analytics in one place.

6. Adobe Analytics

What it is: Adobe Analytics is a web analytics and business intelligence platform.

What it costs: Adobe Analytics is part of Adobe Experience Cloud but you’ll need to contact them to get a pricing quote.

How Adobe Analytics compares to Google Analytics: Adobe Analytics is a comparable alternative to Google Analytics 360 (Google’s premium analytics suite). It’s an advanced, enterprise-level software and by far the most expensive option in this list. 

Adobe Analytics collates data from multiple channels like web, email, and mobile apps, and offers advanced segmentation and customization options such as multi-channel attribution and offline data integration. You’ll also be able to use it alongside the rest of the Adobe Experience Cloud suite, including Adobe Campaign (for email, SMS, and direct mail campaigns), Adobe Real-Time CDP (a customer data platform), and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.

7. Matomo Analytics

What it is: Matomo (formerly known as Piwik—nothing to do with Piwik Pro!) is an open-source web analytics platform. There are two versions: Matomo On-Premise (self-hosted) and Matomo Cloud (hosted by Matomo).

What it costs: Matomo On-Premise is free with no usage limits, but you’ll need to install it on (and pay for) a web hosting server yourself. When self-hosting, additional features like custom reports and A/B testing cost from $229/year each. Matomo Cloud starts at $23/month for up to 50,000 hits but includes the advanced features as standard and has a free trial option.

How Matomo compares to Google Analytics: Matomo offers a lot of the same functionality and reporting options as Universal Analytics. Unlike GA, Matomo doesn’t sample website traffic, gives you complete data ownership, and uses cookieless tracking so you can capture the activity of more site visitors while complying with GDPR and other privacy guidelines. However, you’ll need enough technical knowledge to set it up on a server (unless you’re willing to pay for Matomo Cloud).

8. Clicky

What it is: Clicky is a privacy-friendly, real-time analytics tool for websites.

What it costs: Clicky costs $9.99/month or $79.99/year for 1,000,000 monthly page views.

How Clicky compares to Google Analytics: Clicky is a stripped-down analytics tool with a limited range of reports focusing on real-time data and broad metrics like number of visitors, page views, and referral source. Clicky doesn’t use cookies and all extra tools, like video analytics and Twitter analytics, are included in the price.

12 more Google Analytics alternatives to consider

1. Contentsquare: digital experience platform combining website and customer data

2. Mixpanel: product analytics software for software-as-a-service (SaaS) teams

3. Chartbeat: content analytics solution for online publishers

4. GoSquared Analytics: simple, privacy-focused website analytics tool 

5. Kissmetrics: advanced product and digital marketing analytics 

6. Heap: digital insights platform to map the user journey

7. Simple Analytics: simple, cookieless web analytics tool

8. Open Web Analytics: free, open-source web analytics software framework downloadable from GitHub

9. Independent Analytics: freemium analytics plugin for WordPress websites

10. Friendly Analytics: cookieless web analytics software

11. Slimstat Analytics: open-source analytics for WordPress

12. Wide Angle Analytics: cookieless website analytics

Combine analytics with behavior insights to get the complete picture

Numbers and graphs are not enough to truly understand what's happening on your website from your users' perspective. 

That's why we recommend pairing your chosen GA alternative with Hotjar's tools—Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys, Feedback, and user interviews—to eliminate the guesswork in user experience and conversion rate optimization, driving business growth while keeping your users satisfied.