GoatCounter Review (2025)
An in-depth review of GoatCounter, its features, pricing, and how it compares to alternatives.
Quick Facts
- Target Audience:Developers
- Privacy Focus:Strong
- Hosting:Both (Cloud and Self-hosted)
- Website:Visit Site
Core Features
- Heatmaps:No
- Session Recordings:No
- Conversion Tracking:No
- Real-time Data:No
Privacy & Compliance
- Cookieless:Yes
- GDPR Compliant:Yes
- Script Size:3.5 kB
- Data Retention:Unlimited
What is GoatCounter?
GoatCounter is a simple, privacy-focused web analytics platform that doesn't track users or collect personal data. It's designed for developers and privacy-conscious users who want basic analytics without compromising visitor privacy.
GoatCounter Screenshots
GoatCounter Analysis
GoatCounter Strengths
GoatCounter excels at providing simple, essential analytics without any tracking or privacy concerns. It's completely cookieless and doesn't collect any personal data.
The platform offers both cloud and self-hosted options, with the self-hosted version being truly open source and free to use.
GoatCounter has a generous free tier that includes unlimited pageviews for personal and non-commercial use, making it accessible to individual developers and small projects.
The interface is clean and minimalistic, focusing on the most important metrics without overwhelming users with unnecessary features.
GoatCounter Weaknesses
GoatCounter is very basic compared to other analytics solutions. It lacks advanced features like conversion tracking, goal setting, or detailed user behavior analysis.
The platform has limited real-time capabilities - data is typically updated every few minutes rather than instantly.
No heatmaps or session recordings are available, which limits understanding of user behavior on individual pages.
The reporting features are quite minimal - no advanced segmentation, cohort analysis, or detailed traffic source analysis.
GoatCounter vs Alternatives
GoatCounter is positioned as a more developer-focused alternative to other privacy-friendly analytics tools like Plausible Analytics and Fathom Analytics.
Unlike its competitors, GoatCounter offers a truly free option for personal use and maintains a strong commitment to open source with its self-hosted version.
GoatCounter Features
Core Analytics
- Conversion Tracking
- Real-time Analytics
- Data Layer Integration
User Behavior Analysis
- Heatmaps
- Session Recordings
- Scroll Depth Tracking
- Funnel Analysis
GoatCounter Pricing
GoatCounter offers a generous free tier for personal and non-commercial use with unlimited pageviews.
Commercial use starts at $5/month for up to 100K pageviews, making it very affordable for small businesses.
How GoatCounter Compares to Userbird
Why Choose Userbird?
- Heatmaps included - Unlike GoatCounter, Userbird offers heatmaps to see exactly how users interact with your site
- Scroll depth tracking - See how far users scroll on your pages, a feature not available in GoatCounter
- Simple, intuitive interface - Userbird prioritizes ease of use without sacrificing power
- 5-year data retention - Keep your analytics data for longer than most alternatives
GoatCounter Alternatives
Looking for alternatives to GoatCounter? Here are some other popular analytics tools you might want to consider:
Additional Notes
Open source, cookieless, generous free tier for personal use
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