Plausible vs Google Analytics: Cost and Privacy

This is not a page about saving money. Google Analytics is free, and nothing you host yourself costs less than free. People move from Google Analytics to Plausible for other reasons: who holds the visitor data, whether the script sets cookies, and how much of a dashboard they actually need. If price is your only criterion, keep Google Analytics. Prices below are as of 2026-10-18.

The monthly cost

Self-hosted Plausible here is the one-click Plausible Analytics app, which runs Plausible Community Edition (CE) with Docker Compose. Its recommended 2 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM is Veloxa 2 ($15 a month, $0.03 an hour).

Option	Monthly cost	Where the visitor data is stored
Google Analytics	$0	Google
Plausible Cloud Starter (1 site, up to 10k monthly pageviews)	$9	Plausible
Plausible Cloud Growth (up to 3 sites)	$14	Plausible
Plausible Cloud Business (up to 10 sites)	$19	Plausible
Plausible CE on VeloxaHost (no per-site or per-pageview price)	$15	Your server

Google's page says Google Analytics gives you its tools "free of charge". Its paid edition, Analytics 360, has no published price. Plausible's cloud prices above are for up to 10k monthly pageviews and rise with traffic; Plausible shows the higher tiers on a slider on its site, and yearly billing gives "2 months free". Plausible Cloud has a 30-day free trial with no card required.

Self-hosted Plausible has no pageview pricing. The $15 server is the same at 10k pageviews or several million; what changes is disk use, since every pageview is stored, and at some point the server size.

What the VeloxaHost column leaves out

• HTTPS for the tracking script. On HTTPS websites the script has to load over HTTPS. VeloxaHost servers get a block of ports on a shared IPv4 address without ports 80 and 443, so you need a dedicated IPv4 address, a paid add-on with limited availability, for Plausible's own certificate on 443. The console shows its current price.
• Features CE leaves out. Plausible's comparison page says CE does not include marketing funnels, user journeys, ecommerce revenue goals, SSO or the sites API, and has only basic bot filtering.
• Slower updates and no support. CE is "published twice per year", and self-hosting is "community supported only".
• Your time. You upgrade it, watch the disk and back it up. Snapshots capture the Docker volumes and are not charged.

Where Google Analytics is the better pick

• Cost. It is free. At any traffic level, $0 beats $9 or $15.
• Depth. Google Analytics has far more reports, audiences and integrations with Google's advertising products. If you run Google Ads, that link is hard to replace.
• Nothing to run. No server, no updates, no disk to watch.

Where Plausible Cloud is the better pick

• Small sites. One site under 10k monthly pageviews is $9 on Plausible Cloud, less than a $15 server, with the features CE leaves out and nothing to maintain.

Where self-hosted Plausible is the better pick

• The data stays with you. Pageviews are stored on your server in your ClickHouse database, not with Google or Plausible.
• Many sites or heavy traffic. No per-site or per-pageview pricing: more sites on the same server cost nothing extra.
• No cookies, by Plausible's account. Plausible says it uses "no cookies, no persistent identifiers, no cross-site or cross-device tracking" and "doesn't process personal data". Whether that changes what your site needs for consent depends on where you and your visitors are; ask whoever advises you on privacy law.

FAQ

Is Google Analytics really free?

Yes. Google's page describes it as free of charge. The paid edition, Analytics 360, is sold separately and its price is not published.

Why pay for Plausible if Google Analytics is free?

For control of the data and a script without cookies or personal data, as Plausible describes it, rather than for price.

Can I import my Google Analytics history into Plausible?

Yes. Plausible CE imports from GA4. It needs a Google Cloud OAuth client with the Google Analytics APIs enabled; the Plausible app page has the settings.

Which VeloxaHost size fits Plausible?

Veloxa 2 ($15 a month, $0.03 an hour): 2 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM and 80 GB of disk. The CE README recommends at least 2 GB of RAM so ClickHouse does not run out of memory.

Can I run Google Analytics and Plausible side by side?

Yes. Both are a script tag, so you can run them together while you compare the numbers, then remove the one you do not keep.