# We compared twelve analytics tools for EU sites. Here is what each asks of you.

> tidekeeper's blog, 4 November 2026, by Christina Sørensen: https://tidekeeper.eu/blog/web-analytics-compared

Google Analytics, PostHog, Plausible, Matomo, Clarity and seven more, read on their own pages and weighed the same way: what each stores on your visitors' devices, who asks for their consent, where their data goes, and what each can do.

## In short

- If your visitors include people in the EU, the first question is what a tool stores on their device and where their data goes, not which has the nicest charts.
- Five of the twelve set cookies as they come, so they need a yes first; the light ones store nothing, but can't recognise anyone again.
- Google Analytics' tag weighs 154,737 bytes gzipped. Plausible's weighs 1,290, and ours 1,820.

When we ran Google Ads for three days in October, half of what people typed was the name of another analytics tool: "plausible analytics alternative", "matomo analytics", "google analytics alternative".[1] They were choosing. So we read twelve of these tools on their own pages and weighed their scripts the same way, and put everything in one place.

The version we keep current is in our docs, [Web analytics, compared](/docs/compare), read again every quarter. This is the same comparison on the day we made it, with what we learned doing it.

## The question that comes first

If your visitors include people in the EU, three things decide it: whether a tool stores anything on their device, whether it recognises them again, and where their data goes. What you want to measure picks the path.

1. Just count: a tool that stores nothing on the device and keeps the data in the EU. tidekeeper's easy mode.
2. More, with consent: returning visitors and funnels across visits need a yes; tidekeeper's hard mode asks with its own banner and keeps every answer.
3. Your ads: tidekeeper sends conversions from its server, for visitors who allowed it; no Google tag.

Figure 1. Three things an EU site might want, and what each asks of it. Source: each product's own pages; Google's EU user consent policy; tidekeeper's docs.


In 2022 the data protection authorities of Austria, France, Italy and Denmark found that using Google Analytics sent Europeans' data to the United States without the protection the GDPR asks for.[2] The EU–US Data Privacy Framework made those transfers lawful again in 2023; the General Court upheld it in September 2025, and the case is now before the Court of Justice, which struck down the two frameworks before it.[3]

## Tool by tool

| Tool | On the device | Knows returning visitors | Who asks for consent | Where the data goes | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tidekeeper | Nothing | With consent | Our banner, every answer kept | EU: Denmark, Germany | €9 |
| Google Analytics 4 | Cookies | Yes | You, with a consent platform | Google, USA, under a framework now on appeal | Free |
| PostHog | Cookies | Yes | You, with a consent platform | EU cloud on offer | Free to 1M events |
| Microsoft Clarity | Cookies | Yes | You; enforced since 31 Oct 2025 | Microsoft | Free |
| Matomo | Cookies | Yes | You; it can ask | Your server, or its cloud | €29 |
| Plausible | Nothing | No | Not asked | EU | $9 |
| Fathom | Nothing | No | Not asked | EU isolation on offer | $15 |
| Simple Analytics | Nothing | No | Not asked | EU, the Netherlands | Free |
| umami | Nothing | No | Not asked | Your server, or its cloud | Free |
| Pirsch | Nothing | No | Not asked | Germany | $6 |
| Rybbit | Nothing | Not said | Not asked | Not said | $13 |
| Cloudflare | Nothing | No | Not asked | Cloudflare | Free |

Figure 2. What each of the twelve asks of an EU site. Source: each product's own pricing and privacy pages, read on 3 November 2026.


Storing nothing is not quite the whole test. The EU's ePrivacy rules reach any reading from the device, and Denmark asks for consent for visit statistics where France exempts them under conditions.[4] That is why tidekeeper says which reading each site follows, instead of printing "no banner needed".

## What each adds to every page

| Tool | Script, gzipped |
|---|---|
| Plausible | 1,290 bytes |
| tidekeeper | 1,820 bytes |
| Fathom | 2,091 bytes |
| Pirsch | 3,503 bytes |
| umami | 3,918 bytes |
| Simple Analytics | 4,798 bytes |
| Cloudflare | 10,258 bytes |
| Rybbit | 11,758 bytes |
| Matomo | 22,137 bytes |
| Microsoft Clarity | 25,056 bytes |
| PostHog | 118,644 bytes |
| Google Analytics 4 | 154,737 bytes |

Figure 3. Each tool's default script, gzipped at level 9, to scale. Source: every script fetched on 3 November 2026 and weighed the same way.


Plausible's is the smallest, and smaller than ours. Google Analytics' tag is 85 times ours, and PostHog's 65 times.

## What they have, and what we have

Others are ahead on SQL (PostHog; Google Analytics via BigQuery), session replay (PostHog, Rybbit, Clarity), a free plan and self-hosting. tidekeeper does advanced analytics legally in the EU with its own banner and records, keeps everything in Europe, names the AI crawlers that read you, and has agents, funnels and revenue from €9.

Figure 4. Where others are ahead, and where tidekeeper is. Source: each product's own pages; tidekeeper's plans.


We left session replay out on purpose: it keeps what each person did, one by one. SQL and a free plan we don't have yet.

## Where we land

To count EU visitors without a banner, any of the light tools will do, and Plausible or umami if you want to host it yourself. For a product with SQL, replay and flags and a consent platform of your own, PostHog. If it must be free and you live in Google's ads, Google Analytics, with its banner. To do more than count, legally, in the EU, with the banner and the records brought along, that is what we built tidekeeper for.

## Sources

1. Our Google Ads account's search terms, 21 to 23 October 2026: [We spent DKK 709 on Google Ads](/blog/google-ads-receipt).
2. The decisions of Austria's DSB (April 2022), France's CNIL (February 2022), Italy's Garante (June and July 2022) and Denmark's Datatilsynet (September 2022), as gathered in [iubenda's summary](https://www.iubenda.com/en/help/72017-is-google-analytics-illegal-in-the-eu-and-uk).
3. General Court, Latombe v Commission, T-553/23, 3 September 2025, and the appeal C-703/25 P: [WilmerHale, 1 December 2025](https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/insights/blogs/wilmerhale-privacy-and-cybersecurity-law/20251201-european-court-of-justice-to-review-challenge-to-eu-us-data-privacy-framework).
4. Digitaliseringsstyrelsen and Datatilsynet, "Brug af cookies og lignende teknologier", 15 May 2025; [CNIL, Sheet 16](https://www.cnil.fr/en/sheet-ndeg16-use-analytics-your-websites-and-applications).